Club Penguin
Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online game that ran from 2005 to 2017. The game featured a virtual world that included a wide range of online games and activities. It was created by New Horizon Interactive. Players used cartoon penguin avatars and played in an Antarctic-themed open world. After beta-testing, Club Penguin was made available to the general public on October 24, 2005. It expanded into a large online community, such that by late 2007, Club Penguin reported that there were more than 30 million user accounts. In July 2013, Club Penguin had more than 200 million registered user accounts.
While free memberships were available, revenue was predominantly raised through paid memberships, which allowed players to access a range of additional features, such as the ability to purchase virtual clothing, furniture, and in-game pets called "Puffles" for their penguins through the usage of in-game currency. The success of Club Penguin led to New Horizon being purchased by the Walt Disney Company in August 2007 for the sum of 350 million U.S. dollars, with an additional 350 million dollars in bonuses if specific targets were met by 2009.
The game was specifically designed for children aged 6 to 14; however, users of any age were allowed to play. Consequently a major focus of the developers was on child safety, with several features facilitating this, including offering an "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode whereby users selected their comments from a menu, filtering that prevented swearing and the revelation of personal information, and using moderators who patrolled the game.
Club Penguin shut down its servers on March 30, 2017 following an announcement on January 30, 2017; the game was replaced by Club Penguin Island, which itself was discontinued the following year. Since being shut down, the original game has been hosted and recreated on a number of private servers using downloaded SWF files from the game's old website. Many of the private servers were shut down around May 15, 2020, after Digital Millennium Copyright Act filings by the Walt Disney Company were sent on May 13, 2020. One of the most notable private servers, Club Penguin Rewritten, a complete recreation of Club Penguin, had launched on February 12, 2017, and accumulated an online community of more than 11 million users among the consequences and restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns. Rewritten was shut down on April 13, 2022, by the City of London Police in compliance with a copyright investigation request by Disney.
Plot and gameplay
Club Penguin was divided into various rooms and distinct areas. Illustrator Chris Hendricks designed many of the first environments. Each player was provided with an igloo for a home. Members had the option of opening their igloo so other penguins could access it via the map, under "Member Igloos." Members could also purchase larger igloos and decorate their igloos with items bought with virtual coins earned by playing mini-games. At least one party per month was held on Club Penguin. In most cases, a free clothing item was available, both for paid members and free users. Some parties also provided member-only rooms which only paid members could access. Some major Club Penguin parties were its annual Halloween, Holiday, and April Fools parties.History and development
Predecessors (2000–2004)
The first seeds of what would become Club Penguin began as a Flash 4 web-based game called Snow Blasters that developer Lance Priebe had been developing in his spare time in July 2000. Priebe's attention was brought to penguins after he "happened to glance at a Far Side cartoon featuring penguins that was sitting on his desk." The project was never finished, and instead morphed into Experimental Penguins. Experimental Penguins was released through Priebe's company of employment, the Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada-based online game and comic developer RocketSnail Games, in July 2000, though it ultimately went offline the following year. It was used as the inspiration for Penguin Chat, a similar game which was released shortly after Experimental PenguinsLance Priebe, as well as co-workers Lane Merrifield and Dave Krysko, started to formulate the Club Penguin concept when the trio were unsuccessful in finding "something that had some social components but was safe, and not just marketed as safe" for their own children. Dave Krysko in particular wanted to build a safe social-networking site their kids could enjoy free of advertising. In 2003, Merrifield and Priebe approached their boss, with the idea of creating a spinoff company to develop the new product. The spin-off company would be known as New Horizon Interactive.
Early history (2004–2007)
Work commenced on the project in 2004, and the team settled on a name in the summer of 2005. The developers used the previous project Penguin Chat 2 – which was still online – as a jumping-off point in the design process, while incorporating concepts and ideas from Experimental Penguins. Penguin Chat's third version was released in March 2005, and was used to test the client and servers of Club Penguin. Variants of Penguin Chat 3 included Crab Chat, Chibi Friends Chat, Goat Chat, Ultra-Chat, and TV Chat. Users from Penguin Chat were invited to beta test Club Penguin in August 2005. The original plan was to release Club Penguin in 2010, but since the team had decided to fast-track the project, the first version of Club Penguin went live on October 24, 2005, and four days later Penguin Chat servers were shut down. While Penguin Chat used ElectroServer, Club Penguin would use SmartFoxServer. The developers financed their start-up entirely with their own credit cards and personal lines of credit, and maintained 100 percent ownership. Club Penguin started with 15,000 users, and by March 2006 that number had reached 1.4 million—a figure which almost doubled by September, when it hit 2.6 million. By the time Club Penguin was two years old, it had reached 3.9 million users, despite lacking a marketing budget. The first mention of the game in The New York Times was in October 2006. The following year, Club Penguin spokesperson Karen Mason explained: "We offer children the training wheels for the kinds of activities they might pursue as they get older."Acquisition by Disney (2007)
Although the three Club Penguin co-creators had turned down lucrative advertising offers and venture capital investments in the past, in August 2007, they agreed to sell both Club Penguin and its parent company to Disney for the sum of $350.93 million. In addition, the owners were promised bonuses of up to $350 million if they were able to meet growth targets by 2009. Disney ultimately didn't pay the extra $350 million, as Club Penguin missed both profit goals. At the point when it was purchased by Disney, Club Penguin had 11–12 million accounts, of which 700,000 were paid subscribers, and was generating $40 million in annual revenue. In making the sale, Merrifield has stated that their main focus during negotiations was philosophical, and that the intent was to provide themselves with the needed infrastructure in order to continue to grow. By late 2007, it was claimed that Club Penguin had over 30 million user accounts. In December of that year, The New York Times asserted that the game "attracts seven times more traffic than Second Life." Club Penguin was the 8th top social networking site in April 2008, according to Nielsen.After Disney's acquisition, Disney Interactive had four MMOs to simultaneously juggle: ToonTown, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Pixie Hollow, and Club Penguin, with World of Cars set to follow soon. Lane Merrifield assured GlobalToyNews at the time that "it's a lot of worlds to manage, but we have really strong teams." Merrifield's role changed from taking a backseat in daily game design to focusing on overall branding and quality control of the virtual gaming properties. One of his roles was to merge the Club Penguin studio New Horizon Interactive in Kelowna with Disneyland Studios LA. Disneyland Studios Canada focused its efforts on one product, while Disneyland Studios LA focused on customer products and franchises of a wide selection of games. Merrifield was responsible for cross-pollinating both cultures.
Franchising and growth (2007–2015)
Since the Disney purchase, Club Penguin continued to grow, becoming part of a larger franchise including video games, books, a television special, an anniversary song, and an app MMO. Disney has often used the game as a cross-promotion opportunity when releasing new films such as Frozen, ''Zootopia, and Star Wars, having special themed events and parties to celebrate their releases. The game forged an ever-growing mythology of characters and plot elements, including: a pirate, a journalist, and a secret agent.In 2008, the first international office opened in Brighton, England, to personalise the level of moderation and player support. Later international office locations included São Paulo and Buenos Aires. On March 11, 2008, Club Penguin released the Club Penguin Improvement Project. This project allowed players to be part of the testing of new servers, which were put into use in Club Penguin on April 14, 2008. Players had a "clone" of their penguin made, to test these new servers for bugs and glitches. The testing was ended on April 4, 2008.
On June 20, 2011, the game's website temporarily crashed after the company let the Club Penguin domain name expire. In September 2011, one of Club Penguins minigames, Puffle Launch, was released on iOS as an app. Merrifield commented: "Kids are going mobile and have been asking for Club Penguin to go there with them."
In late 2012, Merrifield left Disney Interactive to focus on his family and a new educational product, Freshgrade. Chris Heatherly took Merrifield's former position. The company dropped the words "Online Studios" from its name in 2013. As of July 2013, Club Penguin had over 200 million registered user accounts. In 2013, Club Penguin hired singer and former Club Penguin player Jordan Fisher to record a song entitled It's Your Birthday, to commemorate ''Club Penguins 8th anniversary.