According to the description for a recent job listing posted over at SCEA’s website (to view the post, do a job search with “Santa Monica” as the location), God of War III is likely to feature online gameplay. The posting indicates that SCEA Santa Monica is specifically looking for an “online gameplay programmer to join the team behind the critically acclaimed AAA titles “God of War” and “God of War II.”" Granted, the description does not specifically indicate the lucky future employee will be working on implementing online gameplay specifically for God of War III, but I think it is safe to assume as much considering that the third installment for the console series has already been announced and production has probably already begun, or will begin soon.

Aside from leaderboards and online stats, it is a bit difficult to imagine how online gameplay would work in a game like God of War. I don’t think we will end up seeing multiple Kratos fighting it out and trying to kill each other on Mount Olympus. Maybe we’ll be able to customize our own “gods”, and specify their particular specialties within an open world environment. For example, the God of the Sea, or better yet the Goddess of the Harvest and you could go around the open environment and bless farmers with good fortune for their crops. As awesome as that sounds (strong implied sarcasm here), I doubt that the online gameplay will take this form. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if and how Sony’s Santa Monica studio eventually decides to implement online features for this title. We’ll just have to wait until 2009 to find out.