The Kids Have Grown Up, but Club Penguin Hasn’t Changed

AP

Young adults dominate re-release of popular online game for children

Before its untimely shutdown, Club Penguin was the talk of the elementary school town. 

Now, the massively popular online game has returned, and though the design hasn’t changed, its players have done more than a decade of growing, leading to a whole new, penguin-filled online experience.

Relaunched earlier last week, Club Penguin, according to its official Twitter account, has already registered six million new players—or penguins. And given the abundance of homebound hours to which the world is being subjected, Club Penguin’s return couldn’t have come at a better time.

For those who didn’t spend their third grade comparing igloos and exploring icebergs, Club Penguin is a virtual world where players live as penguins, earn coins to decorate their igloos, buy clothing, and buy fluffy round pets called puffles. The virtual world is laced with mini games that range from ice-fishing, sled-racing, working at a pizzeria, diving underwater to find hidden treasures and more.

Club Penguin first launched in 2005 and hit peak popularity in 2007 when Disney acquired it. But in 2017, Disney unceremoniously shut the game down due to not making enough revenue to keep its servers up—dashing many penguins’ hopes of earning bragging rights at school for having the nicest igloo in the process.

In the immediate aftermath of Club Penguin’s demise, crafty programmers cobbled together recreations of the original game on various private servers. Club Penguin Rewritten, one of the most popular recreations, attempted to, on the legal basis of its “educational” value, replicate the entire Club Penguin experience attracting over five million users to sign up. This latest recreation, Club Penguin Online, was released this year amidst the coronavirus pandemic, and since its release, there has been much debate on which recreation is better and more like the original.

In the old game, if you were really committed you would beg your parents to pay for a monthly membership which would grant you exclusive member perks such as more clothing options and limited edition in-game items. Today, the game is completely free and there is no need to pay extra for anything on the site, therefore eliminating the disappointment and jealousy felt when seeing other penguins with items you didn’t have. 

One of the most notable features of the game’s re-release is that an influx of returning players—now high school and college students—have replaced the old elementary school clientele. With schools and universities moving online amid the pandemic, these players are undoubtedly leaning into nostalgia—likely as they’re confined to their childhood bedrooms. 

For many, Club Penguin was the go-to platform to hang out with friends after school in the past, and the same players are once again flocking to the game to hang out with classmates and friends that they can’t be with due to current social distancing orders and cancelled in-person classes. 

In the game, players can grab smoothies with their friends, go to the disco for a dance and visit each other’s igloos without staying 6 feet apart. Players on Club Penguin are even going as far as to host group therapy sessions, birthday celebrations, parties, and graduations on the platform.

In the game, it is very apparent that the penguins on Club Penguin are no longer representing young kids behind the screen. Once logged in, vibrantly colored penguins, some of which are decked out in different colored wigs and feather boas, can be seen shouting their college name in hopes of meeting up with fellow classmates, endorsing political figures like Bernie Sanders, and promoting their own social media handles. The penguins have grown up and the irony that adults are now running this game made for kids does not go unnoticed.     

But Club Penguin is more than just an online game. It once served as a community for kids to play and connect with each other outside of school but as kids, we either took for granted or were oblivious to the importance of this socialization.

Today, even without global crises, lack of social interaction is a legitimate problem for many, and Club Penguin serves as an outlet for young adults to get their dose of social interaction, without even leaving the walls of their bedroom.

So, at its core, Club Penguin Online’s relaunch takes its players full circle. 

Even though students clamoring to leave the confines of Zoom and get back to school were probably not looking to go all the way back to their elementary years, Club Penguin’s virtual world is providing a welcome sense of nostalgia and community for a generation whose social and school lives have been momentarily put on pause.