Social Connectivity

It’s very easy to undermine the power and presence that social media holds over our daily lives. Although sites like Twitter and Facebook are inherently simple, there is no doubt that they influence our lives in a way that wouldn’t have been thought possible a mere ten years ago. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic figures in the United States, and if it were a country it would be the third largest in the world, even though the social networking site is banned in China. To add to these statistics, a massive fifty percent of UK mobile internet traffic is directed at Facebook, and this figure proves why 93% of marketers are so keen to integrate social media into their marketing strategies.

It doesn’t end with Facebook either, as Twitter is home to an average of 140 million posts per day, whilst celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and Britney Spears have more followers than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Greece, Chile, North Korea, and Australia. The now infamous Volkswagen advert starring a young Darth Vader was watched by over 37 million people but on YouTube, not television, and if you needed any more persuading that social media is an unparalleled force, it is predicted that social gamers will spend six million dollars on virtual goods by 2013.

Whether you are appalled or in awe of these figures, it’s plain to see why videogame developers are trying everything possible to integrate Twitter, Facebook and YouTube into their titles. Sony first kicked off the movement with firmware version 3.10, which allowed users to link their Facebook with PSN to share details such as earned trophies and purchase information.

This ethic of sharing has continued and is becoming much more evident today, with the promised inclusion of YouTube and Facebook in Uncharted 3. Whilst in game you can chat to your Facebook friends and even invite them to your party, as Christophe Balestra, Naughty Dog co-president, explains when talking to USA Today. “Our goal for Facebook is to really make sure you can interact with your Facebook friends the way you interact with your PSN friends… I don’t think anyone has gone to that level to bring Facebook within the game.” He boasts that Naughty Dog are “the first ones to be doing this” potentially setting a standard for competitors who hope to offer a similar experience.

[drop] It’s impossible to fault the ambition being shown by Naughty Dog, but a crucial question remains; does anyone really care whether you have achieved a new trophy or gained a top spot on the leaderboard? Balestra makes it clear that the integration means much more than simply notifying your friends about your progress. “We’re not just updating your wall with basic things happening in the game… we’re trying to create unique stories every time you play, to continue this feeling of a familiar and close-knit community.”

Uncharted 3 will also contain extensive video editing tools, expanding on what was possible on Uncharted 2. Each multiplayer session is automatically stored and players can post clips of up to ninety seconds to their Facebook walls and even longer sections of footage onto YouTube. The best uploads will then be played via the in-game television channel, Uncharted TV, which Balestra feels is a pivotal feature within the online experience; “We want to give you access to all the media being generated by Uncharted within Uncharted” he says.

There is no doubt that the sharing options of Uncharted 3 are currently without comparison, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that there could be a reason for that. It’s likely that your Facebook friends will be your friends on the PlayStation Network, so inviting your friends to games through the social networking website could be debated as effectively pointless. Similar could be said for the ability to chat to your Facebook friends through PSN; is it really necessary when you could simply send them a message through the PlayStation Network itself?

At this stage, four months before release, it’s admittedly difficult to predict whether the social networking features that Balestra screams about will have a significant impact on the way that we play videogames. It’s certainly novel, and with the aforementioned social media statistics it’s definitely worth an effort, but whether it’s a feature that will be forgotten within a couple of weeks from release remains to be seen. Only one thing can be assured; if the videogaming community embraces these features and continue to utilise them throughout the Uncharted 3 lifespan it could mark a monumental change in online gaming, where everything, down to the very last gunshot, is shared.