Last year, Kotaku experimented with its own version of a Book Club and we will be bringing that back next week for Modern Warfare 2.

We are hoping to curate a community discussion about what has already been a provocative game. As Brian Crecente put it last year in his Kotaku Game Club announcement: "My hope is that it will get me and you and all gamers who participate to look beyond the graphics, the gameplay, the routine and perhaps think about games the way people think about a good book or a good movie."

There's an added element I want to emphasize: The idea of having a shared experience. Any fan of good weekly TV series knows the pleasure of knowing that millions of people are experiencing the same new hour of a show at the same time and then joining online or in person to talk with some of them about it. That experience is not easy to recreate with a video game, but I think we've got a shot with Modern Warfare 2.

So here's the plan, subject to change if you have a better idea or if Modern Warfare 2 proves to be structured differently than its predecessor:

-Wednesday, November 11: The Kotaku Game Club for Modern Warfare kicks off, with a post that will kick off a discussion about the game's first three levels. Those levels... and nothing else. So please try not to play past that, as hard as that will be. (Play multiplayer instead or something). I will start the conversation and then hang out in the comments for an hour so we can chat about those first three levels. I will post a reminder on Tuesday.

-Friday, November 13: The Game Club continues, with another post kicking off a discussion of the game's next three levels.

-We will pick back up on Monday, the 16th, then Wednesday, Friday, and Monday all over again. We'll keep this up until we finish the game.

The Game Club will be for people who want to discuss and debate shared experiences, who want to appreciate and examine a game in a close way, who want to think — and who can resist the urge to play ahead!

Join me on Wednesday.

Don't forget the first Beyond Good & Evil Game Club meets tonight. We're testing out some new software that has no limits and allows for some pretty decent comment controls. Make sure to check back at 7:30 p.m. Mountain Time tonight to discuss our first assignment. If you forgot to play check out the link and get on it. It took me about an hour to get to where I needed to be.

Game Club Beyond Good & Evil First Assignment

Have no fear though, I didn't forget you Game Clubbers, in fact I was working behind the scenes to line up some changes to the club to make it a bit easier for more people to participate and to bring in someone who can help kick off what I hope will become each month's new game. (More to come on that soon, I hope)

Today I can announce that we will be bringing Game Club back starting July 1. Our first title? To kick things off on the right foot we're going with Kotaku pick Beyond Good & Evil.

Now don't jump the gun and start playing it now, if you haven't already. The whole idea of Game Club is for it to be a shared experience. Expect more details coming out over the next couple of weeks as I finalize everything, but until then here are the Game Club's rules.

OK, so I've had this idea for months now, but I can't seem to get it off the ground because:

a: I'm lazy
b: I'm very busy
c: I'm very lazy

I want to start a video game club here on Kotaku that would work sort of like a book club. We'd select a video game each month and play through the game, meeting online to discuss our thoughts on it either after we complete it or, better still, at specific points through-out the game.

My hope is that it will get me and you and all gamers who participate to look beyond the graphics, the gameplay, the routine and perhaps think about games the way people think about a good book or a good movie. I want to do this because I think game developers deserve more than to hear that their game was kick-ass and has amazing graphics and is really super fun to play.

I'm a strong believer that people and by extension their work tend to rise to meet their expectations. If we as gamers start to look more critically at games, at their plots, the nuance of control, the deeper meaning found within a title, I think developers will feel more appreciated and, more importantly, will be more willing to spend time working on those things rather than on better graphics.

Of course I'm also painfully naive.

So let's get to it. I have an online meeting room set-up, but before we pick our first title I'd like to get a sense of who is interested in doing this, and much more importantly, some suggestions about how we should structure the meetings and what sort of rules we should have in place.

OK... GO! Brian Crecente