Game of the Month Club (Kinda)

This actually came through an in-house email at my office: Kotaku is starting a video game club, similar to a book club - each month participants play a video game and then discuss its merits with other club members.

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 think it's an awesome idea, and not just because I'm the kind of geek that could talk about video games all day long. It does help raise awareness of interactive storytelling as an artform, and there are a lot of games that I'd love to discuss with people on a more intellectual level. I also think it's a step beyond, as Brian mentioned in his post, video games as "better graphics, bigger explosions, more intense sound!" and all the other crap that's supposedly "next-gen." And I admit, working on the Xbox team, I was as guilty of promoting that aspect of games as anyone. But eye-bruising graphics and ear-bruising sound and intense action don't necessarily make a memorable game, so at the very least something like Crecente's club will open me to game possibilities I might not have considered before.