Little kids kicking it with Club Penguin

This unique virtual world was built for children and is touted as “kid-friendly virtual world.” Starting in 2005, the company behind it (New Horizon Interactive) has been solely funded by subscriptions itself and has grown from 25,000 users at inception to currently over four million user accounts. Not only has it since achieved such growth, but there they are also sealed by Better Business Bureau’s Kid’s Seal of Approval, and has accolades by NetSmartz, whom is a partnership between the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Obviously, these guys know what they’re talking about when it comes to providing a safe environment for kids and try their best at providing that environment. At least you definitely would think so with some huge brands like Boys & Girls Club of America backing it.

But the real question was…. with all the adult moderation and such, was it fun? Could it even be half as amusing as any of the other games out there? It really couldn’t be could it? So I ventured in to take a look at the wild world of Club Penguin.

The website itself is your portal into the world. There is nothing to download since everything is Flash based. Signing up is simple. You start out by clicking the “Start”. You select your age group and away you go. You obviously have to choose a name and give a valid e-mail with confirmation, but for the most part, they don’t ask for much of anything else.

What’s very interesting is the two types of chatting styles you can choose from. One is where it is moderated. The chat is put through some filters where most bad language is not accepted. Anything outside of that is subject to moderation. Most moderators are standing by and can ban or silence ruly individuals. The other is the safety chat. The Ultimate Safety Chat uses pre-defined questions, answers, and comments for talking. While limited somewhat, it provides your children the most security to chatting since those using USC can only talk with others with USC on. Obviously, I didn’t want to be constrained by predetermined talk, so I chose the moderated route.

Club Penguin actually provides a lot of things to do when you first join the world. Most amusing was when you pelt someone with a snowball. At least I found that amusing when you do it and run for another screen. Yes, I know… juvenile, but hey…. look at the audience! There are also multiple things you can do within the games besides chatting with other “penguins”. You can collect coins by playing mini-games all around screens. These mini-games are actually fairly basic in concept, but were very fun and had me cornered for a while trying to figure out how to out-maneuver my jetpack penguin without running out of fuel. By collecting a fair number of coins, you could then purchase accessories for your penguin, ranging from hats and sunglasses, to guitars, and pets. Yes, even in a virtual world, there were still cooler kids than I. I did manage to collect enough coins to find out that free accounts didn’t get to buy any of the cool stuff. Alas, no cool stuff for me. Oh well. As you can see, it’s also a very cold themed world. Remember how I said there was moderators standing by? That shield with a “M” in it on the top right of the screen is the icon to contact a moderator. Fortunately, there were not any little ones screaming profanity at me, so I didn’t have to use my big “M” shield.

So was it fun? Definitely. Maybe I’m more of a child at heart, but the mini-games could probably get me for hours just like some people play those Flash games for hours on end. Just look at it… you can go against other people in a game of hockey where you bust out some jukes. There isn’t high-sticking here, but it was definitely some mighty skating by some of those guys.

I explored a total of about five or six main areas. Each area usually had a mini-game hidden somewhere and a bunch of penguins just hanging out or throwing out emoticons like you wouldn’t believe. There was a map of the world itself, but I decided against opening it since exploration has always been a more enjoyable way of doing things. While there wasn’t as much conversation or mingling that I could tell, there could have been a language that I wasn’t understanding there between the other participants in the world and I.

Would there be more to it than just this? I suppose while protecting children is great, and I personally liked the fact that they took every precaution, I do wish that there was the ability to have user-created content. The beautiful thing about Second Life is really the fact that the users “create” the community. I’m not talking about figuratively like in Club Penguin, but literally “create”. But the user accounts do not lie: Four million accounts and counting. That does means something. That there are places you can actually feel safe with your children online while still allowing them to enjoy the excitement of social networking.