Star Trek game disappointed J.J. Abrams: "emotionally it hurt"

Star Trek: Into Darkness director J.J. Abrams has discussed how disappointed he was with Digital Extreme's game tie-in.

Speaking with Gamerhub, Abrams explained, "The last game, which was obviously a big disappointment to me, was something that we were actually involved in from the very beginning and then we sort of realised that it was not going in a place where we were going to get what we wanted, so we dropped out and they continued to do it despite... y'know. "Y'know", in this instance, is polite-speak for "it sucked."

"To me the video game could have been something that actually really benefitted the series and was an exciting, fun game with great gameplay, and instead it was not and was something that I think, for me emotionally it hurt, 'cos we were working our asses off making the movie and then this game came out and it got, this isn't 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."

Despite his dismay at the end-product, Abrams hasn't gone sour on the idea of video game movie adaptations entirely, as he's currently working on some projects for Valve. He continued, "I think that, we all know is that 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. It usually ends up being something that everyone that goes to play feels like this was a marketing decision made by a room full of people that wanted to capitalise on a title. That's no way to make a game and no way to make a movie.

"The dream is - we're working with Valve right now on a couple of projects - is to say okay, despite its existence as a game, despite its existence as a movie, what makes this great? And starting from scratch, let's make this from the ground up great, regardless of what's come before.

"And that's 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. And a lot of times these seem to exist as an ancillary product, in which case it will suck."

Do you agree with Abrams on the Star Trek tie-in? Do you feel there is a magic solution to this ongoing problem? Let us know below.

Via OXM.