Director says Digital Extremes’ movie tie-in was “obviously a big disappointment”; believes that anything released as an ancillary product “will suck.”

Star Trek director J.J. Abrams was none too pleased with Digital Extremes’ Star Trek: The Video Game, calling the game in a new interview a “big disappointment” and one that hurt him emotionally.

“The last game, which was obviously a big disappointment to me, was something that we were actually involved in at the very beginning of it and then we sort of realized that it was not going in a place that we were going to get what we wanted, so we dropped out and they continued to do it despite… y’know,” Abrams told Gamerhub.tv at the recent Star Trek: Into Darkness DVD and Blu-ray release event.

Abrams said the game could have been a product that “really benefitted the series,” but ultimately came up short, potentially damaging the impact of Into Darkness.

“Instead it was not and was something that I think, for me emotionally it hurt, because we were working our asses off making the movie and then this game came out and it got, it’s not even my opinion, it got universally panned and I think that it was something without question that didn’t help the movie and arguably hurt it,” Abrams said.

“I think the thing that we all know, anyone who loves video games and loves movies… very, very rarely does a movie based on a game, or a game based on a movie, really work,” he added. “It usually ends up being something that everyone who goes to see or goes to play feels like this was a marketing decision made by a room full of people who wanted to capitalize on a title. That’s no way to make a game and no way to make a movie.”

Abrams is currently working with Portal and Half-Life studio Valve on a pair of projects and said that the way he is approaching these unannounced endeavors is looking at the properties “from the ground up great, regardless of what’s come before.”

“And that to me, whether it’s a video game or a book or a movie or a song. Anything that is based on something else, it needs to exist on its own terms,” Abrams said. “And a lot of times these seem to exist as an ancillary product, in which case it will suck.”

In the interview, Abrams reiterated that he is working with Valve on Portal and Half-Life products, though it is unclear if these are games or movies. At the D.I.C.E. Summit in February, Abrams and Valve boss Gabe Newell announced a partnership for a new game and said Portal and Half-Life films are being considered as well.

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