Club Penguin
| Club Penguin | |
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| Developer(s) | New Horizon Interactive RocketSnail Games Disney Interactive Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Disney Interactive Studios |
| Engine | Adobe Flash |
| Platform(s) | Online |
| Release date(s) | October 24, 2005 |
| Genre(s) | Massively multiplayer online game |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
Club Penguin is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) involving a virtual world containing a range of online games and activities, created by New Horizon Interactive (now known as Disney Canada Inc.). Players use cartoon penguin-avatars and play in a winter-set virtual world. After beta-testing, Club Penguin was made available to the general public on October 24, 2005 and has since expanded into a large online community —growing to the extent that by late 2007, it was claimed that Club Penguin had over 30 million user accounts. As of July 2013, Club Penguin had over 200 million registered user accounts.
While free memberships are available, revenue is predominantly raised through paid memberships which allow 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 use 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 dollars, with an additional 350 million dollars in bonuses should specific targets be met by 2009.
The game is specifically designed for children aged 6 to 14, however, users of any age are allowed to play Club Penguin. Thus a major focus of the developers has been on child safety, with a number of features introduced to the game to facilitate this — including offering an "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode, whereby users select their comments from a menu; filtering that prevents swearing and the revelation of personal information; and moderators who patrol the game. The game has been criticized for teaching consumerism and allowing players to "cheat".
On January 30, 2017, it was announced that the game will be discontinued on March 29, 2017. The game will be replaced by a successor, titled Club Penguin Island, and will only be available on mobile devices.
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 the animal 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, which released the title through his 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 (also known as Penguin Chat 1), a similar game which was released shortly after Experimental Penguins' removal. Released January 2003, Penguin Football Chat (also known as Penguin Chat 2) was the second attempt at a penguin-themed MMORPG, and was created on FLASH 5 and used the same interface as Experimental Penguins. The game contained various minigames; the premiere title of RocketSnail Games was Ballistic Biscuit, a game that would be placed into Experimental Penguins and eventually be adapted into Club Penguin's Hydro Hopper. RocketSnails Games' Mancala Classic would also be placed into the game as Mancala.
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