At this year’s D.I.C.E. summit (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain), co-founder of game developer Valve conversed with filmmaker J.J. Abrams about collaborating on future projects. Gamers and sci-fi fanatics alike, perk up. Newell and Abrams have expressed their interest in bringing some of Valve’s most popular titles–Half-Life and Portal, specifically–to the big screen. “We’re going to try and figure out if we can make a Half-Life movie or a Portal movie together,” said Newell. Additionally, Abrams said that he’d be interesting in working with Valve to create video games inspired by Bad Robot films. Apparently this partnership has been in the making for awhile. “We sort of reached the point where we decided that we needed to do more than talk,” Newell admitted. Though details beyond these are sparse, this is something to definitely be excited about and when more comes through the pipeline you’ll know.

Update: The exciting announcement laid out above came at the very end of a rich 20-minute conversation during which the Bad Robot and Valve founders discussed storytelling methods in movies and video games. At first the two make friendly jabs at each other’s work but quickly the back-and-forth evolves into a stimulating discussion about the importance of the relationship between the viewer/player and the on-screen experience. Watch the full clip courtesy of D.I.C.E. after the break.

[Via Engadget; Joystiq] Continue reading J.J. Abrams and Valve’s Gabe Newell strike a deal to produce movies and games based on their respective projects [Update: video] →