Missing the Point – The Tragedy of Club Penguin Island

where were u wen club penguin die
i was at house eating dorito when phone ring
“Club penguin is kil”
“no”
~ SERGEANT ARCH DORNAN, YouTube commenter

Club Penguin was my childhood. Nearly every day, I’d log in. I’d play some minigames, ranging from simple Connect Four to Card-Jitsu Snow, a turn-based co-op strategy game. I’d care for my puff-ball pets, known as puffles, taking the little guys on walks around the island. I’d gather with friends and strangers alike to form a jack-hammering horde on the iceberg, on the off-chance that maybe, just maybe, the rumors were true and it would tip. My little sister and I would play together with our penguin and puffle plushies. Our copy of “The Awesome Official Guide To Club Penguin” is well-loved. Club Penguin wasn’t just a Flash game. It was a virtual world. It was a real community. And on January 30, 2017, the developers of Club Penguin announced that in just two months, Club Penguin would be shut down forever.

With over 330 million users across its decade of operation, many mourned the loss of this platform they held so deeply. Or, in the words of USA Today, “Club Penguin is shutting down and everyone is sad”.[1] On March 30, 2017, Club Penguin shut down as warned.

Where was I when Club Penguin die? Well, I was there. Right there, that’s me, on the “Abominable” server, on the phone with a friend, as we bonded with total strangers over our mutual loss. Until, inevitably, time stopped, and the connection was severed.

It was over. Club Penguin was kil.

But it was okay. This wasn’t the death of Club Penguin, for Club Penguin would be birthed anew. Originally teased as “Project Super Secret”, Club Penguin Island would be the next iteration of the playful penguin platform. Everything would be okay, because Club Penguin Island was shining against the horizon. And after two years of building hype, surely it would live up to expectations…right?

Club Penguin Island’s launch was…rough, to say the least. And, not even two years later, it was silently shut down. Few mourned Club Penguin Island. Many didn’t even notice it was gone.

What went wrong?

To understand that, we first need to look at the history of Club Penguin–the original Club Penguin–and why it succeeded in the first place.

Lance Priebe[1]:

Back in 2004, there were a ton of news articles about how the Internet wasn’t safe for children. Kids were starting to use MSN, talking to strangers online, and I remember I was sitting watching a news broadcast about all this and thought how can I design a solution?

So I sat and wrote a four-page document on how I could keep kids safe online. [...] I spoke to my colleagues Lane Merrifield and Dave Krysko about creating a spin-off company where we could fully focus on building this new idea, a virtual world that was genuinely safe for kids to hang out with each other in.

Club Penguin launched on October 24, 2005, though it wasn’t the team’s first attempt at an online world. It was the successor to Penguin Chat 3, which, as the name implies, means it succeeded Penguin Chat 2 and Experimental Penguins. Club Penguin had a core mission: to provide a safe social space for children online. As such, many early design decisions were oriented around this goal. How was this accomplished? I guess the best way to see is by looking at what it was like to play Club Penguin.

At last, I had finished my schoolwork, just in time to call my friend over the phone, as we had scheduled earlier that day. We were eight years old and didn’t have cell phones, so I called his house using the landline, simultaneously booting up the family computer. We’d then pick a server. Vanilla was a common pick for us. It wasn’t very crowded, so we could both run it on our painfully slow computers without lagging. We started at the Town Square. Waddling past the coffee shop, dance club, clothing shop, and snow forts, we entered the pizza shop, so that we could hold a pizza-making competition. I…lost. We’d then hiked up the Ski Hill to go sled racing. While we could do a 1v1 race, the most fun maps were only for three or more players. Luckily for us, another penguin was on the hill, as if waiting for an opportunity to sled. We invited them to join us, and we raced down the hill together. This time, I won. I won the rematch race, too. We became friends in game, exchanged a postcard or two, then parted ways. Back at the Town Square, we were greeted with a common saying on Club Penguin: “PARTY AT MY IGGY!” We decided to check it out.

Um, jumping forward in time, I recall hopping on an unauthorized reboot of Club Penguin with one of my friends. We were invited to someone’s igloo here, too, but instead of a party, it was for, uh, group therapy. Just thought I’d mention.

After admiring the chaotic deco of the host penguin’s igloo, we exchanged friend requests and logged off for the day. For the most part, we’d never interact with our newfound friends again. Occasionally, though, we’d collide by coincidence. Maybe we’d do a round of sled racing for old time’s sake. That was always nice.

This sort of experience is really only possible because of a number of design decisions at the core of Club Penguin. The intention of creating a social space is deeply ingrained in each of these decisions.

Lance Priebe[2]:

If you want to form a community, one of the ingredients of all communities is a space to gather. Space creates context and gives the impression that we are facing something together.

You need a venue. This was part of Club Penguin’s success. There was the ice rink or the ski village, these social places where people could live chat with each other, something our team called colliding. We wanted to create collisions; otherwise, you’ve got this feeling of everybody running past you. Collisions meant that users met each other, made a friend, played a game with someone different.

[...]

There was somewhere to move through, somewhere to socialize, and somewhere to play a game. [...] It is how Disneyland is designed and how towns are planned. Disneyland has these hubs, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Frontierland [...] and so forth…

How do you create a social space? You provide opportunities for socialization. Club Penguin accomplished this in a number of ways. Areas like the Town Square became prime spots for people to gather and socialize, even if no actual activities were available in the space. This is by design. The easiest way to get to several in-game activities is through passing through the Town Square. Before you can focus on an activity, you’re thrust into social environments. Maybe, instead of heading to play Bean Counters, you’d go to an igloo party. Collisions are also encouraged through Club Penguin’s minigames. While some minigames were played alone, many could only be played with or against fellow penguins, providing opportunities for social collision. When we went sled racing with a new friend, or joined an igloo party, it was because of Club Penguin’s design that those interactions occurred. When I would run into penguins I’d previously met, it was also because Club Penguin was built specifically to foster social interaction.

Lance Priebe[2]:

Kids made their Club Penguin groups in real life in the school yard or at the school computer lab, then they would go home and meet up in Club Penguin to play together. 

[...]

We’d hear stories about church and youth groups that would meet in Club Penguin. If one kid got sick or was in hospital, the entire classroom would meet up in Club Penguin and play altogether. Kids would share their penguin names at summer camp and connect again in the game.

Club Penguin was a social activity. Alongside providing opportunities to meet others for the first time, it also enhanced and extended existing friendships. Club Penguin was fun to play with friends, because…of course it was. Between minigames like Card-Jitsu, and simply having spaces, both public and private, to hang out and chat, everything about Club Penguin made it the perfect way to interact with your real friends online. That’s how I often played, scheduling times with friends to play Club Penguin, just like Priebe mentioned.

Of course, this is all only possible if Club Penguin was something kids wanted to play, and could afford to play.

Lance Priebe[2]:

Club Penguin operated solely on the revenue from its paid monthly subscribers, which was less than 5% of users. Over 95% of users played the free version, which had so much content that kids still thought it was the greatest game in the world.

The fact that some content, such as most clothing items, was locked off to paid members wasn’t accepted by everyone. And a case can absolutely be made that the monetization scheme glamorized consumerism to unsuspecting children. But, Club Penguin still offered a completely adequate experience to free players, allowing more people to interact on the platform. Club Penguin was fun, even for free members. Most of my time on Club Penguin was as a free member, alongside the vast majority of penguins. Social activities like sled racing weren’t locked behind a paywall. If they were, I and so many others would be locked out of the social situations Club Penguin worked so hard to create.

All of these elements came together with the goal of creating a social space. Was it effective?

While working on this script, I ended up texting one of my close friends a bunch about Club Penguin, the same friend I was with when Club Penguin shut down. While we were reminiscing, he texted me:

Friend: f**k i wanna play club penguin now
Me: bet
Me: rn?
Me: im down

After Club Penguin shut down, many fans took it upon themselves to, against Disney’s wishes, run unauthorized reboots of Club Penguin. These are known as Club Penguin Private Servers, and a truly remarkable amount of effort has gone into preserving the Club Penguin experience for the current day. That night, we hopped onto one of these private servers for a little dose of nostalgia. And that night, we played Club Penguin together for over five hours straight. It wasn’t until 3:30 in the morning that I finally logged off.

Because Club Penguin has been dead for…almost seven years (what the hell), everyone on this server is, like, in their twenties. So, things happen. But this was a really special time for me. You see, the anecdote I narrated earlier was written as a fictional account. It was rooted in my own memories of playing the game, of course, but I haven’t played Club Penguin in ages. That anecdote represents my idealized, rose-tinted recollection of Club Penguin, and what it meant to me. But, when my friend and I returned to it that night, we, by complete accident, hit every single point mentioned in that anecdote.

Club Penguin is just as special as I remembered it to be.

Chris Hendricks[3]:

About four months-ish after Club Penguin launched, maybe three, I don't remember exactly, but we received an email through Club Penguin's support system, as crude as it was at the time. We received an email from a parent of an autistic child, and I don't remember the email exactly, but it said along the lines of, "Thank you for making Club Penguin. My child is autistic. He is 12 years old. He has always had trouble making friends at school, and yet through your site, through this virtual world, my son is making friends left and right, and he is finding ways to socialize that he's never been able to do in real life because of difficulty verbalizing. And not only that, but Club Penguin's ability for him to socialize online has made him more confident to socialize with real people, and so thank you for doing that." And when we received that email, I remember that being the moment of, "Oh wow, this world is going to affect people personally. This is a really, really big and cool thing that I'm working on."

What I keep thinking back to, after that five-hour night of Club Penguin, is a couple of simple conversations I held with some of the penguins online at the time. It was sometimes a bit of a struggle to get through the game’s chat filter, but it was just a normal conversation. We talked about movies, music, games, and stuff we’ve been up to. This stands out to me for one simple reason. This, holding a conversation with someone I’ve never met, is something I kinda struggle with. Even though I (think) I can make myself appear normal in conversation, it isn’t easy or natural for me. Being in unfamiliar social situations is honestly quite scary for me, and I know I lock myself out of a ton of opportunities because of it. I know some people like me turn to social media, turn to Discord, and are able to more easily communicate there. But, honestly, talking over the Internet like that is even scarier for me. So, for Club Penguin to be able to make conversation easy and natural for me, and for other people that struggle socializing? For Club Penguin to give the kid in the email the social confidence to make friends in real life? If Club Penguin’s goal is to be a good social environment, I can’t think of any better praise than that.

When Disney acquired Club Penguin in 2007, the Club Penguin team had access to many more resources, and were able to realize their vision to a far greater extent. After founding members left the project, the original vision of Club Penguin as a social engine began to blur. This is when Club Penguin began to see a declining population, especially as kids moved on to other virtual worlds and online social environments. Yet, due to how deeply ingrained the original vision is in its design, Club Penguin remained Club Penguin at its core.

Which leads us back to 2017. Throughout this video, I’ve explained how Club Penguin’s design funneled into what it was at its core – a deeply social environment. But, this video is (ostensibly) about Club Penguin Island. (The, uh, title says it right there.) So what was Club Penguin Island?

Club Penguin Island was not Club Penguin. (At least at launch.)

And, really, I think that’s the best way to sum up the Club Penguin Island 1.0 experience. At its core, the original Club Penguin was a social space. Club Penguin Island didn’t have that core.

Club Penguin Island’s gameplay was centered around “adventures”, or “quests”. In a quest, an NPC, either Rockhopper, Aunt Arctic, Cadence, or Rookie, has you travel around the island to complete tasks. It also featured daily challenges, which awarded coins and experience points for completion. Some challenges were completed solo, while others required multiple penguins to work together to finish. While Club Penguin had somewhat of a progression system in the form of stamps, and some in-game events had forms of solo quests, it was far from the core game loop, which was more freeform in nature.

Let’s return, for a moment, to the factors that led to the original Club Penguin’s success. Club Penguin worked because it provided opportunities for social collision. It was something that was fun to play with existing friends. And it provided ample fun content for free players. Club Penguin Island’s quest-centric design, unfortunately, worked in opposition to these factors.

Quests in Club Penguin Island were completed solo. Not only did this mean that the primary game loop was pretty much single-player, but it degraded the value of the social spaces present in the game. If I’m working on a quest, even if I enter a social hub, it’s probably for the sole purpose of getting the quest done. I’m less likely to stop and socialize if I have a very direct goal I’m trying to achieve. This reduces the chances for collision in social spaces–players are more likely to walk past each other instead.

Community daily challenges, the ones that required multiple penguins to complete, seems like a great solution to this problem. Giving penguins an incentive to do stuff together will create social collisions. Unfortunately, priority wasn’t placed on this aspect of the game. In March 2017, Club Penguin Island had 116 challenges in the draw pool. Of these, only 31 of these challenges were for multiple players. The rest were solo.[4] Club Penguin Island prioritized solo play over building a social environment.

This isn’t helped by the fact that, at launch, Club Penguin Island had no multiplayer minigames. So many of my interactions on Club Penguin started because of multiplayer minigames, and they just…weren’t on Club Penguin Island.

This meant that there wasn’t really too much to do with your friends, either. You could do the daily challenges, walk around, and…that was pretty much it? Maybe you could do quests at the same time, but there was just one problem…

tamago2474[5]:

I downloaded Club Penguin Island, started it up, and was promptly informed about how I could purchase their membership subscriptions. Literally the first thing I see upon opening the app. Already a fantastic start.

[...]

I approved my account, logged into the game, membership.

[...]

Of course, they all have padlocks, indicating that I can't actually use them as a non-member.

[...]

He then gave me a jackhammer, and I was quickly informed that only members can use jackhammers.

[...]

And even if you make clothes using the starter pack accessories they give you for free, you still have to be a member in order to wear them. So what is actually the point of making me spend my coins on an item that I can't even use?

Nearly all of the game’s content was locked behind a monthly subscription. Nearly ALL of it. Clothing was always pretty locked off from free players in Club Penguin, but this seems to have been even worse in Club Penguin Island. Almost all of the quests, the main source of in-game content, were member only. Over a third of daily challenges were member only as well. There was honestly very little for free players to do on Club Penguin Island, and this further diminished its capacity as a social space.Clothing was always pretty locked off from free players in Club Penguin, but this seems to have been even worse in Club Penguin Island. Almost all of the quests, the main source of in-game content, were member only. Over a third of daily challenges were member only as well. There was honestly very little for free players to do on Club Penguin Island, and this further diminished its capacity as a social space.

What makes me sad about all this, alongside the loss of Club Penguin itself, is the fact that the Club Penguin Island team, at least as far as I can tell, really tried their best to make the game work, despite the rocky release. Problems such as a lack of multiplayer activities was something actively addressed with later updates, for instance. In general, the team appears to consist of a group of people that genuinely loved Club Penguin and its community. The sort of heavy-handed monetization employed by Club Penguin Island is simply not what a team like that would implement if they had their way. Information on Club Penguin Island development is really sparse, so I can only speculate as to what happened behind the scenes. It really seems like a Disney exec, with little understanding of Club Penguin, attempted to milk it for cash, forcing it to fit into the framework of a manipulative mobile game. And in the end, that is what led Club Penguin Island to its failure. The design decisions made in Club Penguin Island serve a completely different purpose than that of Club Penguin, and it shows. Those in charge failed to understand why Club Penguin worked, and so they were unable to make Club Penguin Island a success. That’s the tragedy of Club Penguin Island.

Club Penguin Island was made using the Unity game engine, and that’s honestly pretty funny, because in September 2023, Unity made a very similar mistake. A game engine is a framework that games can be built on, and Unity is particularly of note for its accessibility. As written on Ars Technica, “Since it was introduced in 2005, Unity has tried to make creating video games possible for everyone regardless of technical know-how or budget.”[6] Unity’s accessibility has allowed a vast ecosystem of tutorials and resources for new developers, which funneled further into Unity’s success. These days, Unity is used for projects as large as Genshin Impact, and as indie as Rhythm Doctor (play Rhythm Doctor). In September 2023, however, pricing changes were announced that would force developers to pay for every install of their game. For some developers, this meant as much as 108% of gross revenue.[7] It would cost them more money merely to pay for Unity than they received from the game itself. When you think about what Unity’s core goal was up until that point, it’s not surprising at all that it backfired entirely. This single decision put thousands of developers’ livelihoods at risk. Such an effect should not be taken lightly. Even after reversing the decision, Unity is still feeling the effects of its misstep. Like Club Penguin Island, Unity’s execs completely missed the point of the product they were selling. And like with Club Penguin Island, this lack of understanding is what led to failure.

More and more companies are “missing the point”. Reddit recently threatened to remove itself from search engines like Google. “Reddit can survive without search,” a representative of the company stated.[8] Of course, this is despite the fact that over half of its web traffic comes from search engines[9], and adding “reddit” to searches is practically a meme at this point.

savannahXYZ[10]:

I have to add the word “Reddit”
To every goddamn search to read
Content made by humans

Google doesn’t work
Anymore…

And Twitter–I mean X–I mean Twitter–Twitter’s just doing its own thing, I don’t know anymore…

Even when there are people behind the scenes that truly understand the goals of a project like Club Penguin, or Unity, or Reddit, and even when they have the skills to realize these goals, it’s not a guarantee that they will be the ones making the decisions. Club Penguin Island took Club Penguin–a truly remarkable social platform–and tore out its core, the social experience that made Club Penguin, Club Penguin. Its failure is representative of a greater pattern in which corporate leadership, lacking an understanding of the original goals of a project, makes decisions that eventually lead to its downfall. The effects of these decisions can be massive, even to the point of putting thousands of livelihoods at risk. In the case of Club Penguin, it simply led to the loss of the most potent social platform I’ve ever seen.