When it comes to “connected” gaming, Rockstar clearly gets it.

No, that’s not something we ever expected to plunk out on the old keyboard - after all, it took the mod community to drag the studio’s Grand Theft Auto juggernaut into the online realm.  And while the company’s Midnight Club franchise does have a respectable multiplayer pedigree (full disclosure: Rockstar partnered with GameSpy to enable online multiplayer gameplay in several installments of Midnight Club on the PlayStation and PC), it’s tough to point to those games as doing anything besides dipping a racing slick into the waters of true gaming connectivity. 

View Tuesday’s worldwide press blitz on GTA IV‘s multiplayer modes through that historical lens, then. (Miss the coverage?  You can get an in-depth hands-on preview over at GameSpy.com). The Grand Theft Auto franchise, venerated for revolutionizing both gameplay and storytelling mechanics, has finally shifted its focus to online multiplayer - and they’re approaching the task with the same zeal applied to developing open-ended sandbox game worlds, non-linear storytelling and hooker jiggle physics.

To wit, not one, but FOUR very distinctive multiplayer modes: Team Deathmatch, Cops & Crooks, GTA Race and Hangman’s Noose (a co-op mission). At first blush, this sounds fairly run-of-the-mill; we’ve seen co-op and TDM before.  But Rockstar has several surprises in store. Team Deathmatch, for example, goes beyond the vanilla implementation of that game mode by allowing players to do pretty much everything they love to do in singleplayer in a multiplayer setting: dive out of speeding cars, take out pedestrians, you name it. GTA Race literally allows you to hurl the game’s full arsenal in your competitors’ ways.  To cap it all off, GameSpy.com also reports that, “… some elements of Rockstar’s Social Club [which launches today!] will integrate with multiplayer.” In essence Rockstar has carjacked multiplayer gaming, and is mashing its pedal to the floor to bust through the in-game, out-of-game barrier.

The point here isn’t to wax rhapsodic about GTA IV, however - it’s to point out what’s possible when a developer puts the full spectrum of connected gaming front and center in its design. Rockstar is committing the same level of revolutionary thinking to multiplayer, community and competition that it applies to the actual gameplay experience.  Truly, for GTA IV, the two are one and the same - obviating the excuse you typically hear from developers that they’ve “sacrificed multiplayer features in order to spend more time on the core gameplay.” We’ve long argued that the two are not mutually exclusive.  Rockstar seems to agree.  We’ll let GTA IV‘s sales numbers finish the story.