"Club Penguin is like Pixar.....it's for everyone!"
- Polo Field (Twitter Q&A)
I joined Club Penguin in the summer of 2008. What automatically struck my grade school self when I signed up - and what led to me sticking around for all these years - was the immense depth that the game gave to players. For the inexperienced gamer that I was, the easy controls and consistent update schedule were welcoming. However, the game didn't talk down to me like it thought I was incapable of intelligent thought; there was a lot to discover, but it wasn't all clearly laid out as to be obvious. Games like Jet Pack Adventure were easy to learn, but offered hidden secrets that took days to figure out. It was just plain fun.
And, now, here we are over five years later. Gone are the days of reading a clue scribbled by Rockhopper himself to find a key. No, today we are told to find three snowflakes hidden in plain sight like neon lights in busy Manhattan. The crafty hiding techniques of pins were pronounced dead years ago, leaving today's gigantic collectibles. "Just plain fun?" No, just plain demeaning.
Because what wrecked Club Penguin above everything else was the site being dumbed down.
Of course, you can argue that Club Penguin isn't really that different; it's ourselves, the older, more intelligent human beings who have changed and have grown out of "that game for babies." But, just listen to me for a little while and you might change your mind.
Back in 2008, the PSA missions were still coming out. The classics! The things I still maintain are the greatest products to ever come from the team! These missions - and the later continuations given to us in the two fantastic Nintendo DS games - introduced us to some great characters and gave us lots of neat new artwork. Along with that, they were layered, with slightly complicated inventory building and mini-games and bonus material sprinkled in throughout. They also had another essential ingredient for success: plot. Every single mission contained a single, structured storyline that was easy to understand, but also held plot twists, foreshadowing, and cliffhangers that made you think. At the same time, there was an overarching plot, which played out over several years. They were absolutely amazing.
Now, we come back to the world we currently live in. We no longer have missions, but rather operation parties. These events never hint at the future and only give us the structure of a plot, without any real stuff in the middle. Instead of weaving us from one situation to another, the "plot" demands that we do a simple task a handful of times, and, when we do get to see Herbert, he merely threatens us, rather than giving us actual information.
And, it's not just secret agent plots, either. Back in the day, we heard from Gary week after week about his adventures during the Festival of Flight. On the contrary, for the past two months of 2014, we've been told that there are visitors coming to Club Penguin. The end. Case closed.
Then there are the games. Back when I joined Club Penguin, games like Puffle Launch were still coming out, which offered secret levels, collectibles, and areas that you had to find by exploring. Now, just look at the past few games.
- Sled Racer: main game, with nothing else
- SoundStudio: main game, with nothing else
- Jet Pack Adventure (app): main game, with nothing else
- Card-Jitsu Snow: main game, with nothing else
Decorated rooms suffer as well. As last month's Frozen Party proved, Club Penguin no longer trusts us enough to find every single altered room ourselves and has instead marked every one on the map. The team also seems to believe we don't have the attention span we had a couple years back to look at more than a handful of rooms.
The Club Penguin blog is one place where this shift is really felt. As I stated at the end of last year, blog posts have pretty much lost their meaning. Every week, we get a Chattabox post, a Penguin of the Week post, and a Mod Monday post, and, every week, they say pretty much the same thing. Flash back to 2008, and you'll see that Billybob would post just ever so often, with actual new, valuable information in tow. And then there were the sneak peeks: the old ones made you guess and speculate, whereas the new ones simply show you what is to come. This also extends to the Club Penguin Times, which used to be a lot longer and more detailed, versus today's vague version.
Another aspect I feel tries to appeal to young kids more than anything are videos. Now, these are relatively new to the scene; up until the end of 2011, videos were only seen once and a while, mostly for Coins For Change. However, now we get one or two a week. These videos - particularly The Spoiler Alert - are usually very, very simple with very little information in the end (which is ironic, because we get most of our news from them now days). The jokes here are pretty simple as well.
This is all highly ironic because, as the main game tries to appeal to young children more and more, the team seems to be trying to reach out to teen and young adult fans more and more as well. With social media accounts all around and clothes that seem to appeal to more urban, fashion-savvy teenagers, the game seems to be contradicting its approach.
Is Club Penguin for everyone, as Polo Field claims? No, in fact, it's not even made for its intended age range anymore. While the site has always maintained that it is designed for players 6-14 years old, I feel that the updates that launch in present day are more for a 4-10 year old crowd.
Regardless of their reasoning for this, Club Penguin needs to shift gears and quickly. Otherwise, a lot of us might click that log off button for the final time.
As Billybob would say, Waddle On!
- Chillin43
The Club Penguin blog is one place where this shift is really felt. As I stated at the end of last year, blog posts have pretty much lost their meaning. Every week, we get a Chattabox post, a Penguin of the Week post, and a Mod Monday post, and, every week, they say pretty much the same thing. Flash back to 2008, and you'll see that Billybob would post just ever so often, with actual new, valuable information in tow. And then there were the sneak peeks: the old ones made you guess and speculate, whereas the new ones simply show you what is to come. This also extends to the Club Penguin Times, which used to be a lot longer and more detailed, versus today's vague version.
Another aspect I feel tries to appeal to young kids more than anything are videos. Now, these are relatively new to the scene; up until the end of 2011, videos were only seen once and a while, mostly for Coins For Change. However, now we get one or two a week. These videos - particularly The Spoiler Alert - are usually very, very simple with very little information in the end (which is ironic, because we get most of our news from them now days). The jokes here are pretty simple as well.
This is all highly ironic because, as the main game tries to appeal to young children more and more, the team seems to be trying to reach out to teen and young adult fans more and more as well. With social media accounts all around and clothes that seem to appeal to more urban, fashion-savvy teenagers, the game seems to be contradicting its approach.
Is Club Penguin for everyone, as Polo Field claims? No, in fact, it's not even made for its intended age range anymore. While the site has always maintained that it is designed for players 6-14 years old, I feel that the updates that launch in present day are more for a 4-10 year old crowd.
Regardless of their reasoning for this, Club Penguin needs to shift gears and quickly. Otherwise, a lot of us might click that log off button for the final time.
As Billybob would say, Waddle On!
- Chillin43
I love you.
ReplyDeleteLOL
DeleteMeritorious work! :D You are great with articulating insightful arguments. :) You should send a copy of this post to an e-mail to Club Penguin.
ReplyDeleteThere are two omissions I'd like to point out. When you say that, "With social media accounts all around and clothes that seem to appeal to more urban, fashion-savvy teenagers, the game seems to be contradicting its approach", could you elaborate why the game seems to be contradicting its approach? I definitely agree with this statement but it would pay to elaborate it to allow for optimal constructive criticism in your post.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I would correct "...Festival of Flight, for the past two months of 2014, we've..." to "...Festival of Flight. For the past two months of 2014, we've..." just to get the right sentence flow.
It's not easy to make blog posts like these that persuade an opinion, which is why very few CP enthusiasts do it, but I think you did an excellent job on this one! :)
Thank you very much for the feedback! When I have some extra time I will probably come back to this post and expand upon some of my thoughts, or, I may perhaps post a followup if things start going in another direction.
DeleteAlso, thank you for telling me about that sentence flow mistake. I try my very best to pick out the rough patches in my posts, but sometimes things just slip through the cracks. If you ever see any other mistakes in my post, do not hesitate to tell me about it.
Don't worry. We WILL.
Delete