Club Penguin

Massively multiplayer online game

Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) 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 (now known as Disney Canada Inc.). 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 over 30 million user accounts. In July 2013, Club Penguin had over 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 dollars, with an additional 350 million dollars in bonuses should specific targets be met by 2009. The game was specifically designed for children from 6 to 14, however, users of any age were allowed to play Club Penguin. Thus, a major focus of the developers was on child safety,

On January 30, 2017, it was announced that the game would be discontinued on March 29, 2017. Club Penguin later shut down its servers on March 30, 2017, at 12:01 AM PDT. The game was replaced by a successor, titled 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 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. The most notable private server, Club Penguin Rewritten, a complete recreation of Club Penguin, had launched on February 12, 2017, and accumulated a large online community (in excess of 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.

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. 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 (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. 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. 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.

Work commenced on the project in 2004, and the team settled on a name in the summer of 2005. 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. 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, 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 that number had reached 1.4 million—a figure which almost doubled by September, when it hit 2.6 million. 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."

Although the three Club Penguin co creators had turned down lucrative advertising offers and venture capital investments in the past, 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. 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 (renamed to Disneyland Studios Canada) with Disneyland Studios LA. Disneyland Studios Canada focused its efforts on one product (with such features as multilingual versions), while Disneyland Studios LA focused on customer products and franchises of a wide selection of games. Merrifield was responsible for cross pollinating both cultures.