Valve Software's esoteric research has spread to making hardware, with a job listing seeking an electronics engineer to work with its team on designing and producing actual physical things. "We're not talking about me-too mice and gamepads here," Valve says, "help us invent whole new gaming experiences."

The lucky engineer's job will be, the listing (via VG247) says, to "Work with the hardware team to conceive, design, evaluate, and produce new types of input, output, and platform hardware."

One potential avenue is biometrics, which Valve has been interested in for several years. In 2008, co-founder Gabe Newell mused about measuring players' brain activity with EEG scans, to see how they react to games. Dota 2 can track the pulse rate of players hooked up to the appropriate gizmo, too.

It had been rumoured in March that Valve was working on a 'Steam Box' standardised PC, but the company has denied that, saying it's simply building test PCs for Steam's Big Picture mode.

"We're also doing a bunch of different experiments with biometric feedback and stuff like that, which we've talked about a fair amount," Valve's Doug Lombardi said at that time. "All of that is stuff that we're working on, but it's a long way from Valve shipping any sort of hardware."

Or they could be hiring for something entirely new and wonderful.