What Is Club Penguin?

Club Penguin is an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) involving a virtual world containing a range of online games and activities, developed by Club Penguin Entertainment (formerly New Horizon Interactive). 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[2] 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 12 million user accounts.[3] 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 “pets”, also called puffles, for their penguins through the use of in-game currency).[4] 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, with an additional $350 million in bonuses should specific targets be met by 2009.[3]

The game was designed for the ages of 6 to 14.[5] Thus a major focus of the developers has been on child safety,[6] 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;[6] and moderators (along with veteran players) who police the game.[7] The game has been criticized for teaching consumerism[8] and allowing players to “cheat”.[9]