Why the world needs a Club Penguin successor – that isn’t Roblox

Club Penguin – the Disney-owned, Flash-based MMO, which ran from 2005 to 2017 – was a formative expertise for a technology of kids. Stephen MacDonald, who was a senior supervisor at Disney from 2012 to 2015, says that Club Penguin had over 300 million registered customers at its peak.

However the demise of Adobe Flash put paid to this penguin paradise, and a mobile-focused successor, Club Penguin Island, didn’t take off – it shut down in December 2018, round a 12 months and a half after its launch.

Now, Roblox has risen to grow to be many kids’s first style of the on-line world. However MacDonald thinks that Roblox isn’t any substitute for the safety-centred method Club Penguin supplied.

“What used to occur is a child would go from a preschool product, like Peppa Pig, after which would go to Club Penguin to study what it was to be protected on-line, study all these instruments, then they might graduate to Fortnite or one thing like that.”

Now, he says, “you’ve got received children going from Peppa Pig to Roblox, and sadly, that will not be protected sufficient for that age of children. They aren’t prepared for what’s in entrance of them and the social instruments that they’ll have to work together with a lot of adults.”

“In a lot of the aggressive video games, they’re simply chum in the water for older children and younger adults. But additionally socially, it isn’t protected. They’re being preyed upon.”

That is why MacDonald has based Magic Potion Video games, with the intention of offering a non secular successor to Club Penguin. The corporate has been backed by Sq. Enix, 1AM Gaming, 1Up Ventures, and Konvoy Ventures, and has sought steering from business veterans together with Bungie founder Alex Seropian and Club Penguin co-founder Lane Merrifield. Importantly, their new recreation, Think about Island, is placing a agency give attention to stay moderation and age-appropriate security options, and is aimed squarely at kids aged 6–13.

“Our entire factor was, let’s return into that area, supply one thing for that child coming from a preschool product,” says MacDonald. “Then they’ll graduate to one thing like Roblox or past.”

The previous toy’s membership

MacDonald relies in Kelowna, British Columbia, the place the authentic Club Penguin was developed by New Horizon Interactive in the early 2000s, earlier than being offered to Disney in 2007. He ran Club Penguin’s recreation design and manufacturing for a number of years, and he remembers the lengths the firm went to to maintain kids protected.

“Not a lot of individuals understood how a lot effort went into it,” he says. “Simply what number of stay moderators we had, simply a whole lot of individuals that had been accountable for ensuring that children’ content material was protected and no dangerous actors had been coming in, how a lot we labored with regulation enforcement to verify that folks like predators had been reported and moved off of our platform as quickly as doable.”

“We developed the expertise that grew to become Group Sift,” he provides, referring to the chat filter and moderation device spearheaded by Chris Priebe, brother of Club Penguin developer Lance Priebe, which was purchased by Microsoft in 2021. “It was fairly leading edge for the time.”

However there have been delicate behaviour nudges, too. MacDonald provides the instance of a participant strolling into a room and saying “one thing edgy”, with the recreation making it seem as if the message had been obtained by different gamers, when in reality it had been blocked in the background. “It is like getting into and making a joke and nobody laughs, and you are like, ‘Ugh, that’s uncomfortable’. So that you’d strive one thing else, after which that would get by, and everybody would chortle. So we had been in a position to actually socially engineer what sort of content material received by to everyone.”

“Club Penguin simply labored on all the pieces – that recreation labored on a toaster”

In the end, Club Penguin died with Flash. And though MacDonald wasn’t concerned with the follow-up Club Penguin Island, he thinks the cellular pivot was ill-advised.

“At the time, there was a lot of strain to get a mobile-only title, and it was like, ‘Hey, all children are on cellular, let’s go in that path’. There have been a few of us that had been like, ‘I do not suppose that’s utterly true’. An enormous swath of our viewers performed on PC due to accessibility. [Club Penguin] simply labored on all the pieces – that recreation labored on a toaster. Everybody might soar on simply, and I believe that was a part of the secret method.”

The rise of Roblox

In the years since Club Penguin’s demise, Roblox has grown spectacularly, rising from 13.7 million every day energetic customers in This fall 2018 to 144 million in This fall 2025, in response to Statista.

“We had been monitoring Roblox since the starting,” remembers MacDonald. “It is like 20 years previous at this level, and it was launched as a instruments platform – it was not deliberately a child’s product, it was constructed as a device suite. So I believe the DNA of the firms could be very, very completely different. Club Penguin was constructed with an viewers of children in thoughts.”

However he acknowledges that Roblox has accomplished an incredible job of participating audiences. “Credit score the place credit score’s due, I keep in mind the first time I put all the recreation designers in a room to play Work at a Pizza Place when that first launched on Roblox, and I used to be like, ‘We’re in hassle: here is why’.

“We did not have the tech to have the ability to do what Roblox was doing at the time. It was a very radical departure, and we had been watching Minecraft and Roblox and different video games come up and take this viewers in a new path. And we knew that it was like, ‘Hey, that is a altering of the guard for positive’.”

“You probably have a platform that has children on it, it’s your duty to maintain children”

He might see that Roblox would ultimately take over the world. “However my solely situation is, I believe as the adults in the room, if in case you have a platform that has children on it, it’s your duty to maintain children. And I do not suppose that is being taken under consideration sufficient.”

The US Senate lately launched an investigation into Roblox, saying the platform “seems to prioritise income and engagement metrics” over youngster security. Roblox started requiring customers to confirm their age earlier than they’ll use chat options in January, and in 2025 it rolled out a “delicate points” content material descriptor. In 2024, it launched protections that meant below 13s had been now not in a position to entry direct messaging.

Subsequent-generation penguin

Imagine Island was established by asking a query, says MacDonald. “What’s the DNA of Club Penguin that you’d take ahead, and the way would you make one thing for a new technology that performs otherwise?”

He says it is one thing he is had in thoughts for years, however his departure from Digital Arts in 2023 following the closure of his studio gave him the probability to lastly make it a actuality. “So I grabbed a couple of my previous Club Penguin pals – Sascha Williams, who used to run the Club Penguin studio, and Karin Johnson, who used to run the occasion staff with me – and I used to be like, ‘Hey, let’s go get some VC capital, see if there’s any curiosity in going after this market’.

“There was. We had been in a position to increase a few million {dollars} to prototype Think about Island and get it off the floor. After which we simply began with the thought of security as the very first thing. So how can we reasonable? How can we be sure that children are protected on-line? [We established] a couple of basic guidelines as a product that we might put in place. After which let’s begin testing enjoyable.”

The sport sees gamers creating a customized avatar after which exploring the world, taking part in minigames, finishing quests, and interesting in community-driven challenges, and it has already gathered a sizable viewers. “A few months in the past, we crossed a million customers, and we’ve not spent any actual cash on advertising but,” says MacDonald. The sport emerged from beta in August.

Like the authentic Club Penguin, Think about Island is playable in a browser (because of a partnership with the web-game firm CrazyGames), and MacDonald says there are some IP activations on the method, in addition to the recreation’s first advertising push. “Over the subsequent six months, there’s some fairly aggressive plans,” he says. “This December is the second I am ready for in a actual massive method.”

“They’re in a protected playground area, and there are adults watching over”

However security stays the key focus. MacDonald says the recreation is utilizing the GGWP moderation device along with human oversight. He provides that he sees a lot of potential in AI instruments that can flag problematic dialog patterns.

“My primary rule is, are children protected? That must be the primary factor. The whole lot else comes after that.”

“As we have developed this world, I actually consider it nearly like an elementary college the place you let folks out on lunch or a recess, they usually’re out in teams solo, however they’re in a protected playground area, and there are adults watching over to verify that there is not any dangerous actors coming in.”

“I do not suppose AI is wherever close to what a human with a human’s instinct can do proper now. However as we scale, after all we will have a look at that.”

TTP

In fact, it is arduous to keep watch over all the pieces. MacDonald notes that Think about Island options user-generated content material (UGC), though the recreation does not enable gamers to add property, “so we are able to management what that appears to be like like.”

“But additionally there’s methods for folks to rearrange property in perhaps not so good methods,” he says. “So there’s a lot of moderation of areas that occurs with our recreation as nicely.”

Is he speaking about ‘time-to-penis’, we ask?

“100%. That is what I used to be dancing round, however you bought to it way more eloquently than I did.”

He emphasises as soon as once more that security is the first precedence. “Then we begin to deal with all these different points, and youngsters are going to push the boundaries. And in case you’re a mother or father, you perceive very nicely that children, that is what they do. As quickly as they attain a sure age, they begin discovering what their very own private identification appears to be like like. They will attempt to push in opposition to boundaries. They will strive, particularly in an nameless place like a web-based online game, they’ll attempt to see what’s allowed and what’s not. They will strive some issues they would not dare strive in entrance of their mother and father or a instructor.

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“So there’s a diploma of ‘sure, children can be children’. However we at all times do the over the shoulder check. If a mother or father walked by and stated, ‘What are you taking part in?’, they usually’re taking part in Think about Island, what would they see on display? Wouldn’t it move the sniff check of a mother or father? And that’s the factor that we have in mind. So time to penis is precisely the stuff we discuss all the time, and we strive to verify that the issues that we give them do not very simply make these shapes.”

It has been a very long time since Club Penguin shut down, and MacDonald acknowledges that the world has modified a lot since then. The COVID pandemic particularly negatively affected a entire technology of kids. “A number of children at a very formative age had been packed into digital [world], they usually discovered that their digital presence is as vital as their bodily one. So digital worlds really grew to become hyper vital, and also you’re watching this with Roblox, [which] basically grew to become the mall for a technology of individuals.”

“A number of children discovered that their digital presence is as vital as their bodily one”

However he thinks that the method kids play hasn’t modified that a lot. “Issues like Adopt Me [in Roblox], that’s simply an evolution of the Puffle system from Club Penguin, nearly verbatim,” he says.

So he is astonished how few video games have adopted in Club Penguin’s footsteps. “It blows my thoughts. So I simply suppose there’s a enormous alternative to do one thing.”

“I believe as a recreation developer, what rests on my shoulders is kind of a duty. I get to say one thing to the world, and I actually need it to be a optimistic message. I would like this to be a deposit in the world financial institution, not a withdrawal. In the event you labored on Club Penguin, in case you had been a a part of that, you’d perceive how impactful it was.”

He remembers when the Make-A-Want Basis organized for a youngster with a terminal illness to return and see how Club Penguin was made. “We drew them as a penguin,” he remembers. Seeing how a lot the expertise meant to them was like a “punch to the coronary heart”.

“I keep in mind after they left for the day, pondering, ‘Wow, that is actually, actually way more vital than a lot of us have acknowledged’. That has by no means left me – how vital video video games are, and the way vital it’s that you are taking it severely.”