Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online game MMO , involving a virtual world that contained a range of online games and activities. It was created by New Horizon Interactive now known as Disney Canada Inc. Players used cartoon penguin- avatars and played in a winter-set virtual world. After beta-testing , Club Penguin was made available to the general public on October 24, , [1] and expanded into a large online community , such that by late , it was claimed Club Penguin had over 30 million 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 for the sum of million dollars, with an additional million dollars in bonuses should specific targets be met by The game was specifically designed for children aged 6 to 14 however, users of any age were allowed to play Club Penguin.

These features included offering an "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode, whereby users selected their comments from a menu; filtering that prevented swearing and the revelation of personal information; [6] and moderators who patrolled the game. On January 30, , it was announced that the game would be discontinued on March 29, Club Penguin later shut down its servers on March 30, The game was replaced by a successor, titled Club Penguin Island. 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 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 , though it ultimately went offline the following year.

Released January , 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. Lance 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.

Work commenced on the project in , and the team settled on a name in the summer of Penguin Chat's third version was released in April , and was used to test the client and servers of Penguin Chat 4 renamed Club Penguin. Users from Penguin Chat were invited to beta test Club Penguin. The original plan was to release Club Penguin in , but since the team had decided to fast-track the project, the first version of Club Penguin went live on October 24, , [21] just after Penguin Chat servers were shut down in August While Penguin Chat used ElectroServer, Club Penguin would use SmartFoxServer.

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. One of his roles was to merge the Club Penguin studio New Horizon Interactive in Kelowna renamed to Disneyland Studios Canada with Disneyland Studios LA.

He noted that DSC focused on one product deeply with such features as multilingual versions , while DSLA focused on customer products and franchises of a wide selection of games; he helped cross-pollinate those cultures. 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, among other things.

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 the release.

In , the first international office opened in Brighton, England, to personalise the level of moderation and player support. On June 20, , the game's website temporarily crashed after the company let the Club Penguin domain name expire.

In late , Merrifield left Disney Interactive to focus on his family and a new educational product, Freshgrade. Chris Heatherly took Merrifield's former position. As of July , Club Penguin had over million registered user accounts.

In April , it was revealed that Disney Interactive had laid off 28 members of Club Penguin 's Kelowna headquarters due to the game's declining popularity.

Some employees in the Los Angeles office were also let go. Disney Interactive stated to Castanet about the layoffs: As part of this ongoing process, we are consolidating a small number of teams and are undergoing a targeted reduction in workforce.

On September 2, , Club Penguin closed down the German and Russian versions of the site.

On January 30, , Club Penguin announced that the current game would be discontinued on March 29, , to make way for its successor, Club Penguin Island. A popular competitive sport began in the final weeks of Club Penguin, in which players attempted speedruns to see how fast they could get banned from the site; the fastest records were tool-assisted speedruns.

Days before the shut down, Club Penguin announced that on the final day of the game's operation, all users would be given a free membership until the servers were disconnected. On March 30, , at Prior to being purchased by Disney, Club Penguin was almost entirely dependent on membership fees to produce a revenue stream.

An alternative revenue stream came through the development of an online merchandise shop, which opened on the Club Penguin website in August , [62] selling stuffed Puffles and T-shirts. Key chains, gift cards, and more shirts were added on November 7, As with one of its major rivals, Webkinz , Club Penguin traditionally relied almost entirely on word-of-mouth advertising to increase the membership.

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Club Penguin was designed for the ages of 6— As Lane Merrifield stated, "the decision to build Club Penguin grew out of a desire to create a fun, virtual world that I and the site's other two founders would feel safe letting our own children visit.

The system employed a number of different approaches in an attempt to improve child safety.

List of Glitches in Club Penguin Rewritten | Club Penguin Rewritten Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia

The key approaches included preventing the use of inappropriate usernames ; [69] providing an "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode, which limited players to selecting phrases from a list; [67] using an automatic filter during "Standard Safe Chat" which allowed users to generate their own messages [70] and blocked profanity even when users employed "creative" methods to insert it into sentences; [69] filtering seemingly innocuous terms, such as "mom"; and blocking both telephone numbers and email addresses.

Each game server offered a particular type of chat—the majority allowing either chat mode, but some servers allowed only the "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode. When using "Standard Safe Chat", all comments made by users were filtered. When a comment was blocked, the user who made the comment saw it, but other users were unaware that it was made—suggesting to the "speaker" that they were being ignored, rather than encouraging them to try to find a way around the restriction.

Beyond these primary measures, systems were in place to limit the amount of time spent online, and the site did not feature any advertisements, because, as described by Merrifield, "within two or three clicks, a kid could be on a gambling site or an adult dating site".

Players who used profanity were often punished by an automatic hour ban, although not all vulgar language resulted in an immediate ban. Players found by moderators to have broken Club Penguin rules were punished by a ban lasting "from 24 hours to forever depending on the offence.

Coins for Change was an in-game charity fund-raising event which first appeared in The fund-raising lasted for approximately two weeks each December during the game's annual "Holiday Party".

Players could "donate" their virtual coins to vote for three charitable issues: Kids who were sick, the environment, and kids in developing countries. At the end of the campaign, a set amount of real-world money was divided among each of the causes based on the amount of in-game currency each cause received.

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".

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 and Holiday parties. Other large parties included the Music Jam, the Adventure Party, the Puffle Party, and the Medieval Party. Elite Penguin Force was released by Disney for the Nintendo DS on November 25, As members of the "Elite Penguin Force", players solved mysteries around Club Penguin.

The game features mini-games from Club Penguin ; coins earned by the mini-games could be transferred to the player's Club Penguin account. Herbert's Revenge , was announced on February 13, with a release of May A "mysterious penguin" resembling previously established character Dot the Disguise Gal was a major character in the game.

In , Disney Interactive Studios announced plans for Club Penguin: It was reported that the game was released on September 21, in the U.

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The game was based around several interactive games, some of which were 3D versions of games then played and games which appeared only at the Fall Fair such as Puffle Paddle in Club Penguin. Players were able to customize their penguins and choose their team blue, red, yellow, or green. Any points earned in the Wii game could be synchronized with Club Penguin. A Christmas TV special based on the game, titled We Wish You a Merry Walrus , was produced by British company Factory, and aired on Disney Channel in the UK on December 17, A Halloween special, Halloween Panic!

In honor of Club Penguin 's third anniversary in , Club Penguin released books that were published under the Snowball Press name. Adventures at Sea by Tracey West , Stuck on Puffles by Ladybird Books, and Waddle Lot of Laughs by Rebecca McCarthy. As of mid-November , Disney Interactive advertised a related but separate mobile gaming environment named " Club Penguin Island ", to become available in select languages and areas in Pre-registration was available for reserving player names.

Club Penguin received mixed reviews throughout its journey. The site was awarded a "kids' privacy seal of approval" from the Better Business Bureau.

A criticism expressed by commentators was that the game encouraged consumerism [8] and allowed players to cheat. In addition, the "competitive culture" that this could create led to concerns about cheating , as children looked for "shortcuts" to improve their standing.

It was suggested that this might influence their real-world behavior. In spite of the attempts to create a safe space for children in Club Penguin , concerns about safety and behavior still arose within the media.

While the language in-game was filtered, discussions outside of Club Penguin were beyond the owner's control, and thus it was stated that third-party Club Penguin forums could become "as bawdy as any other chat".

One criticism came from Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic Monthly: Experienced players protested in-game about Disney apparently "ruining" Club Penguin. Although the staff and other players said that Disney had helped make Club Penguin better, some longer-term users disagreed. This caused major controversy between Club Penguin and fans of the three games, especially Toontown , where some users had played for more than 12 years Toontown 's alpha test started in August From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For the video game series, see Club Penguin video game console series. For the mobile game released in , see Club Penguin Island. Club Penguin video game console series.

This list is incomplete ; you can help by expanding it. Club Penguin Developer Blog. Archived from the original on April 29, Retrieved June 16, Retrieved August 15, Retrieved December 26, Archived from the original on April 20, Retrieved June 15, Retrieved May 25, Retrieved May 24, The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 28, Retrieved January 31, Archived from the original on October 16, Retrieved May 19, Retrieved February 3, Retrieved January 19, Club Penguin's Lane Merrifield".

Archived from the original on December 19, Retrieved May 16, The Globe and Mail. Retrieved May 12, Retrieved November 28, MySpace, Club Penguin growth static, LinkedIn soaring". Club Penguin Improvement Project: Archived from the original on April 21, Retrieved January 17, Retrieved December 27, Disney Club Penguin "Club Penguin" is operated and presented to users in all locations by Disney Canada Inc. Retrieved September 2, Retrieved April 9, Archived from the original on September 5, Layoffs strike Disney's Club Penguin".

Retrieved February 5, Retrieved March 16, Retrieved June 17, Archived from the original on November 13, Retrieved December 4, Club Penguin is a G-rated MySpace-type site that gives kids a safer way to mingle online".

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