Alright, as promised today we're kicking off the rejuvenated Game Club with a group play through of fan favorite of Beyond Good & Evil. If you're interested in playing through a game along side a group of friends and then discussing the deeper meaning of the game and its plot, don't forget to hop in.
We will be meeting weekly, on Monday's at 9:30 p.m. Eastern, though this month with the holiday and E3, is going to have an odd schedule. I'm pretty sure it will be easy to get through the game in four meetings. So let's plan on our first meeting to start on July 7 at 9:30 p.m. Eastern. Just come to the site and look for the Game Club Beyond Good & Evil Discussion post.
In this first assignment for Beyond Good & Evil you'll need to complete the the Black Isle Mines section of the game. Make sure you don't play past that point because I'd like us all to be on the same page, so to speak. After playing through the chunk, try to think up some interesting questions and discussion topics. I will have a list of my own, but I'm hoping we can all ask each other interesting things to discuss.
The game is available for the Xbox (not backwards compatible) PS2, Gamecube and the PC via Steam and Gametap.
Hit the jump for the Game Club rules.
The Game Club is going to be conducted via the Internets, meaning, sadly, we won't all be meeting in Fahey's living room over coffee and crumpets to discuss the latest Game Club game. Instead, we will be meeting both on Kotaku and in a giant chat room.
I hope to dump the on-going discussion the group of people is having into the Kotaku post so those who couldn't make it in or who arrive late can still participate with one another.
Once in the room, I'll moderate the chat. The idea here is that we don't want a few dozen people all trying to talk about the game at the same time. So, I hope we can get someone to ask an intelligent question and then take turns discussing it. Remember this is a work in progress so we'll make tweaks to the mechanics of how this works as we proceed.
A cardinal rule will be that there will be no off-topic talking, no trolling, no flame wars, no fan-boyism in the chat or the person will be kicked out. We're all intelligent people, I don't see why we can't act like we are when gathered together online.
In general the idea is for people to discuss the current video game in a thoughtful and meaningful way. Why we won't totally disallow discussion of things like graphics and play mechanics, those particular topics should really be brought up in a way that addresses the deeper meaning and ideas presented in the game.
Each week I'll do a post outlining the Game Club's assignment. Please, no playing ahead. This could taint your views of what's currently going on in the section we hope to discuss.
Hopefully, this mostly makes sense. Ask your questions here about how this will work and I'll try to answer them.