Filmmaker J.J. Abrams (Cloverfield, Star Trek) and game creator Gabe Newell (Half-Life, Portal) just announced they'll be working together on creating movies and games, via their respective companies, Bad Robot Productions and Valve Software. "We sort of reached the point where we decided that we needed to do more than talk," Newell said of the partnership. The two were speaking at the DICE 2013 conference in Las Vegas, addressing "Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?" After a half hour of speaking about storytelling in their respective mediums, Newell announced that the presentation came from an ongoing conversation between the two about storytelling. Today's news is the fruition of that conversation, with the two taking action.

Newell specifically said that J.J.'s team could craft a Half-Life or Portal film -- something we've heard about in the past, albeit not with Abrams attached -- and Abrams said that Valve could help create a game with Bad Robot. Interesting indeed! Of course, the two have their jobs cut out for them -- Abrams is currently working on both the Star Trek and Star Wars movie franchises, and Valve's got a new hardware initiative set to debut this year.