Rockstar have today revealed a little more about the multiplayer aspect of their upcoming blockbuster sequel Max Payne 3. One of the big new features in multiplayer is the introduction of Crews. Rockstar's Dan Houser recently sat down with IGN to talk about this new feature.

Crews go beyond traditional online clans by allowing players to join large public Crews or simply create a private Crew that members can customize. In this way, Crews help players keep the fight alive from match to match - and even across titles - through the Rockstar Games Social Club, which will keep track of Crew stats, including Feuds (more info on that below).

I bolded the important part there, across titles. Yep, that means Crews you create in Max Payne 3 will be usable in other R* games, including Grand Theft Auto V. Below is a larger excerpt from the interview which explains in more detail how Crews will work, and how they will carry over to future titles:

How will Crews be able to interact?

One major way will be with Feuds. In multiplayer games we have a feature called Vendettas – if someone kills you twice, you can initiate a vendetta against them, which lets everyone know that you're out to get that person. For you, a special X marks their blip when they're visible to you on the map. If you take that person down, you get extra XP. If they survive your vendetta though, they get that XP.

Crew Feuds are essentially Crew Vendettas: impromptu skirmishes between crews that can spring up in multiplayer matches that quickly spawn a first-to-10-kills battle. You can be playing any team-based game with a completely new set of players, but if you spot two or more members of a crew you're feuding with on the opposite team, any kills you get against them will count to the overall feud so rivalries will spring up automatically - and when they do, you'll be notified and the grudge will come to the forefront of the game.

We'll track who you're feuding with, how long you've been feuding, and who's winning. You'll get extra XP for taking down members of crews you're feuding with, so you'll be able to remember those grudges for future matches. Again, we want to create more drama out of the interactions that go down in typical multiplayer matches.

And the beauty of this system is that crews persist over time and across future games. Multiplayer is an ever-more important part of all our games moving forward, and by creating crews through Social Club the crews that you create in Max Payne 3 will be ready and available for you to play in Grand Theft Auto V from day one. It's all part of our larger approach to make multiplayer deeper and richer than what's currently available, much more easily accessible to the newcomer and rewarding for the hardcore.

Will the spirit behind Crews and Gang Wars – multiplayer with a user-generated narrative – appear in other Rockstar's forthcoming games?

We made a promise not to talk too much about forthcoming games until a little further down the track but, yes, crews will feature in Grand Theft Auto V multiplayer. We are firm believers in the potential of third-person multiplayer and the attachment it can create to character, stories and worlds. This is at the heart of what we're doing with Crews, and we think it opens up limitless new possibilities for the future. It's right at the heart of our goal to bring greater weight and context to multiplayer games while still staying true to what competitive multiplayer does so well.

You can read the full interview over at IGN.