This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.
As with nearly all things Disney, when they embraced the technology of virtual worlds, they did it in a big way. Not that it was without a bumpy start, mind you. Their earliest venture into the space called ToonTown launched way back in 2003 and has been panned pretty hard - or worse, simply ignored. But, as I heard from Steve Parkis, SVP of Disney Online Studios, when he spoke at the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo, Disney is not only improving the worlds they already have, but also taking the technology for creating them and adding a bit of the “Disney Difference” to it.
Club Penguin
Not everyone was sure it was a good thing when Disney bought the popular world of Club Penguin last August. Many took a wait-and-see approach to the news; and one year later, some users still don’t like it, while others have embraced it as a good thing. Founded in November of 2005 in Kelowna, Canada, Club Penguin is the flagship of Disney’s virtual world arsenal. It has more than two million accounts and its online newspaper, The Club Penguin Times, is apparently more widely read than New York’s Daily News, the Chicago Tribune or the Dallas Morning News. So, we decided penguins would be next on our safari of kid-focused virtual worlds.
When first going to the site it seemed that we would have to purchase a monthly subscription to enter, but a little more poking around and we found where we could create an account to get in-world for free. The sign-up process requires e-mail verification, supposedly by a parent. This was the first sign that parental involvement is definitely encouraged in Club Penguin. During sign-up, you’re given a choice of open (but human-moderated) chat or restricted chat. I thought about going with the open chat to allow more interaction, since I had heard from Parkis about the millions of lines of chat their moderators have reviewed; but, in the end, I opted for the pre-set conversation options. Might as well take the super-safe side while she’s unaware of any other way to do it.
Once in, we picked a penguin color and name then headed off to see the sights. My girl picked the “nightclub” first, which turned out to be pretty tame - a dance floor downstairs and a couple of video games upstairs. The games we found as we explored beyond that starting point to the beach, the mines, the soccer field and more ranged from easy to challenging - a good thing for the wide range of ages they want to attract.
The Good
One of the best things about Club Penguin is their definite focus on kid safety and parental involvement. Related to that is the moderation and interaction the company has with their users. Here in Austin last week, one of the Club Penguin founders, Lane Merrifield, spoke about that moderation and interaction during a keynote of the Austin Game Developers Conference: “‘We rarely hire techies to take care of the kids… we hire people who care about the kids,’ with backgrounds as teachers and other professionals.” More than 150 of them respond to e-mails, have direction interaction with the Club Penguin members and, with the help of game veterans, enforce a constantly evolving censorship list.
The Bad
You really need to pay a monthly subscription fee to get everything out of it. Some things like the ability to buy merchandise for your “room” are limited. The options for non-subscribers to customize are there, but they’re fewer in number and your child will beg for the subscription so they can get the things they see, but are unable to purchase.
The Lessons Learned
There are plenty of fun games for your little penguin to play; but, if you want the full experience, be prepared to pay for it. A one-time purchase of a stuffed animal will not get it for you. Also, there is way more to learn than can fit in one post. The world has entire blogs focused on it, wikis, lots of game cheat sites, and apparently, in-world armies that have epic snowball fights. And that doesn’t even include the active Disney-run community blog that keeps penguins up-to-date and in-touch even when not in-world.
Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers (the apple didn’t fall far). She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.
