Clique on to Penguin
How a virtual world is changing social dynamics in fifth-grade classrooms across the country
Club Penguin's founders were surprised when their virtual world started pulsing with romance. But ultimately the team, three fathers in British Columbia who ditched their new media company to build the site, decided intervention would be counter to their ideals. They built Club Penguin to be a "virtual sandbox"—just like real life.
But kids say the best parts of Club Penguin are the ways it isn't like real life. "It's about having a rule-free virtual world, which is so addicting because anything you could ever want to do—basically, like almost everything—you can do it," explains Matteo, a District of Columbia fourth grader. "I can make my penguin do anything I want," says 12-year-old Luke of Manhattan. Luke runs a website that publishes hacks, or ways to cheat Club Penguin's system. He can make his penguin dance, or get coins without playing games, or even fly. In the real world, Dennis is teased for playing with girls. But in the game, his penguin is very popular because other players read Dennis's blog. In Club Penguin, Dennis gets his dreams of celebrity.
The online world can be liberating, but it has downsides, too. When Dennis lost his membership for stealing coins, he called the Club Penguin office in tears. His mother, Bilyana, says she's grateful for the lessons the site has taught her son about ethics. After being banned, he has sworn off hacking for life. But she hopes the obsession will fade. "He found himself in a virtual world," she says. "When I see him sitting there on that position all day or for a few hours—I'd rather see him playing outside."
Club Penguin has made efforts to discourage excessive use. New features come out weekly, rather than daily, and the site doesn't punish users for not visiting frequently, as some competing sites do. The creators plan to release a feature in June that will let parents limit how much time kids spend on the site.
But Club Penguin is, in many ways, an exception to the increasingly big business of 'tween gaming. While Club Penguin gets its profits solely from subscriptions, its rivals feed on ads. Some sponsors even pay websites to put products in the games, a kind of product placement called "advergaming."
These sites predict rapid future growth: Nicktropolis, where kids can meet up with actual Nickelodeon characters, announced it has attracted over a million users since its January launch. Finland-based Habbo.com, which gets 10 percent of its revenue from ads, has seen its American user base of older kids grow in the last few months, with 1.7 million users in North America last month—a number the company projects will double, if not triple, by the end of the year.
But for now, Club Penguin is America's 'tween networking king. Two weeks ago, GraceAnn Stewart finally relented and dropped her son off at daycare. When she picked him up, she found a scene that confirmed her suspicions: 19 little bodies sitting in front of 19 computers, all logged in to Club Penguin.
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