You may remember Threewave Software best for the original "Capture The Flag" Quake mod. These days, the studio's known for developing the multiplayer component of several major titles, most recently Touchstone's Turok and EA's Army of Two, and is currently developing the multiplayer for Activision's upcoming Wolfenstein title.

As you may have noticed, many of the devs to which we turn for our hardcore fix seem to be making full-tilt sprints for social networks like Facebook and the casual space. In today's ultra high-risk game development environment, Threewave also thought it'd be prudent to get on the burgeoning social media train, founding Gnosis Games, a casual subdivision with titles like Paparazzi, which according to the studio is a chart-topper on RealArcade, Gamehouse and other casual portals.

Now, Threewave's Gnosis has turned to Facebook. In this case, though, there's a surprising and interesting ulterior motive that's more in line with the hardcore audience than you might guess.

Reader Willkiller tipped us to this WTF?!-thread in the Gametrailers forum. In GTA IV multiplayer, apparently someone's turned into a zombie wearing nothing but yellow Rockstar-logo underpants.

There are a few comments indicating gamers have seen zombies in online play, but nothing about transforming into one yet. Theories range from getting killed by a Rockstar employee, to killing a Rockstar employee, to getting the highest ranking.

They quote the official strategy guide (I don't have it) "If you see unclothed characters, look out! Only players who have reached the max ranking of 10 and a few other "special" people get the honor of shooting in their skivvies." But this player says he's only at Level 2. The user's name in the forums is GTA. I couldn't find a PSN ID for him.

More pictures after the jump. Warning, one's at a kinda uncomfortable low angle.

GarageGames' labor of love, browser based action game portal InstantAction.com ads another title to their arsenal tomorrow with the introduction of Rokkitball. Rokkitball is a futuristic, team-based game that weaves together action and strategy to form a very compelling concept in browser-based gaming.

Rokkitball brings a new level of multiplayer gaming to InstantAction, combining the frantic pace of a shooter with the team strategy of a real-world sport," said Alex Swanson, Rokkitball Producer and Designer. "We plan to provide an on-going flow of new content to players through InstantAction, with several additional stadiums and enhanced team customization options already in the works."

As a color-blind gamer, I can't recall having many eye-rubbing hangups over which side to attack, who was friend or who was foe. You don't need colors to tell the opposite side in a game like Star Wars: Battlefront, for example, and the only way to miss red versus blue in Halo would be to lack all color vision. And Guitar Hero is more about finger position than it is the hue of the button to push.

That said, it's a common condition and as Ars Technica points out, one that developers either don't know what to do with, or do too little to accommodate.

I posted a rather lengthy (too lengthy) write-up of my impressions of Grand Theft Auto IV's multiplayer gaming earlier today. If you're not up for reading through the whole thing, and getting some samples of what the play was like and whether I liked it, you can just hit the jump and read the fact sheet for the modes I played through. Think of it as a GTA multiplayer crib sheet.

If you are up for long reads check out all of our impressions of GTA IV so far:

Hands on With GTA Multiplayer: City of Chaos
GTA4 Hands-On: The World is Yours
Rockstar Experimenting with Episodic Content
GTA IV: Reinventing a World
Grand Theft Auto IV

A couple of months ago, before I had a chance to play GTA IV, I got into a discussion with an industry insider about Rockstar, and in particular, the Grand Theft Auto franchise. We were talking about whether the polarizing series, much beloved by gamers and reviled by non-gamers, had jumped the shark.

Would this be the last GTA, I wondered. The insider was quick to say no, even after I pointed out that I had watched a chunk of the single-player campaign, which impressed me, but didn't seem to include any giant leaps forward for the franchise.

"Did you see multiplayer?"

"No."

"Just wait."

With the PlayStation 2 port of High Impact's excellent PSP take on the Ratchet & Clank series just a week away, the official PlayStation Blog posts some details about the game's multiplayer. PS2 Size Matters takes the same amusing multiplayer functionality from the PSP version and splits it in two for split-screen goodness between you and a friend. You get four maps - Island Escape, Danger Valley, Mega Cannons, and Moon Cow Disease - complete with the Iron Lombax special challenges for each map. Personally I miss my R&C online multiplayer, but how much can you really expect from a $29.99 port of a PSP game?

Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters PS2 Multiplayer Details [PlayStation Blog]

Happiness is coming to Ace Combat 6 owners in the form of downloadable content that will be made available over Xbox LIVE this Thursday. Content includes five new plane variants that range in price from free to 400 MS points. Also available will be three new multiplayer maps ranging from 100 - 300 MS points each and one new single player map for 350 points. You can check out all the details on each plane and map after the jump.