Uncharted 3 Will Put Your Facebook Friends in The Game

Commander Fury · April 18, 2011

Other video games may connect to Facebook, but upcoming PS3 title Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is headed into uncharted territory by bringing Facebook and other social media connections directly into the game.

Game developer Naughty Dog is working with Facebook and YouTube to expand the ability to share experiences from within Uncharted 3â€” sequel to the 2009 title named Game of the Year by multiple outlets â€” without the need for external tools.

At the start-up menu, players can view a “feed” that shows which Facebook friends on the PlayStation Network are currently playing and whether they’ve posted updates or videos. Clips can be viewed without leaving the game. Previously, videos had to be handcrafted and exported for uploading to YouTube.

While PlayStation Network and Xbox Live let players send automated updates to Facebook, “I don’t think anyone else has gone to that level to bring Facebook within the game. People usually do it the other way around,” says Christophe Balestra, co-president of Naughty Dog. “We are the first ones who are doing this.”

None of these social-media upgrades affects the single-player story mode, an adventure starring Indiana Jones-ian franchise hero Nathan Drake. But when players get the game, due Nov.1, they can opt in to Facebook connectivity.

The developers hope that the changes make the multiplayer game environment less intimidating and more familiar.

“Our goal for Facebook is to really make sure you can interact with your Facebook friends the way you interact with your PSN friends,” Balestra says. “You can talk to them (and) you can invite them to your party. You are going to see icons of people’s faces and their real names. So right away it is going to feel bigger.”

Players can post screen shots and video clips that show off their customized characters and team emblems. After a game finishes, a player might send out a post that he found a treasure during the game. The first five friends who “like” the post could get an in-game gift. Players also can post videos of multiplayer game action of up to 90 seconds.

“We’re trying to create unique stories every time you play, to continue this feeling of a familiar and close-knit community, sort of like how Facebook already operates when friends upload photos and videos of their travel or parties,” he says. “We’re not just updating your wall with basic things happening in the game.”

Those who want to tinker with their videos will have a battery of new in-game post-processing tools. Each multiplayer session is stored on the hard drive of the player’s PS3. You can go into that video file and direct the scene to your liking, moving the camera around, adding voice to a character and even sharing the video so a friend can help edit. “You can create your own movie and tell a story,” Balestra says.

Past games such as Halo 3 have included filmmaking tools to make scripted videos, but Uncharted‘s direct link for uploading videos to YouTube is unique.

The best uploaded videos might wind up on “Uncharted TV,” which will play in the bottom right corner of the pregame menu.

“People can watch the best plays that we selected,” he says. “We want to give you access to all the media being generated by Uncharted within Uncharted.”

Uncharted 3 will have some new multiplayer game types, too. A new Deathmatch mode pits three teams of two against one another, and Free-for-All lets eight players compete until the last player is standing. And for the first time, players can sit side by side and play on a split screen.

“If you watch a football game, you talk about it the next day because everyone watched the same game,” Balestra says. “This is (to) get people who play to have a better experience.”