The Tragedy of Club Penguin

Another childhood crushing moment in history: Club Penguin is…SHUTTING DOWN! No, this is not a drill–the beloved website launched in 2005 by developers at New Horizon Interactive (which Disney eventually bought and renamed Disney Canada Inc.) is shutting down on March 29, 2017. The website made the announcement on January 30th with mixed reactions of sadness, disbelief, and resignation.

Club Penguin is a massive multiplayer online game (MMOG), which means the game is able to support thousands of players all at once. The game contains different activities within it, such as sledding where you can earn coins to buy clothes, pets, accessories, etc. The website had a large focus on child safety and made sure interaction on the website was kid-friendly by banning anyone who used expletives while interacting with other penguins. There were also other features to the website like better items and exclusive igloo rooms that were for paying members only.

Club Penguin has long been a pop culture icon for people our age who, with starry-eyes, saw the game as one of the coolest things out there. I honestly feel bad for people who have kept their accounts for nearly 12 years now! Although it may be a distant memory for people who never made accounts, like me, the name “Club Penguin” was always prevalent and I look back at the soon to be nonexistent website as a symbol of nostalgia. For college students and teens, what we consider “the good ol’ days” is slowly disappearing into a forgotten memory, where only enthusiastic conversations, memes, and chances to relive those experiences (like the ever-so-coveted reruns of early 2000s childrens’ shows!) if you’re lucky, bring back the original joy we once had. Club Penguin is just one of many examples of how we are witnessing the death of our childhood, and even worse, growing up! As such a tiny, but significant part of our life vanishes, a new part of our life begins. It’s wonderful to hold onto the past, but like Club Penguin shows us, sometimes we have to let our past go, no matter how heartbreaking it might be. The glimpses of our childhood will make us happy in the future, but time is linear and we have to move on with or without Club Penguin. I asked Juniors Angie O. and Mallorie D. how they felt about the website shutting down. Mallorie happily replied, saying she was “more of a Moshi Monsters person, so seeing Club Penguin shut down made her glad.” To her, this will clearly lead to the “domination of Moshi Monsters.” Angie jokingly responded, “I never had a membership when I played in elementary school, so I promised myself that my future kids would get a membership! What am I supposed to do now?”

Well, she and the rest of the distraught Club Penguin fans are in luck, because although the classic Club Penguin is shutting down, a new island-based version, Club Penguin Island, will be launched very soon in March for mobile devices only!

Club Penguin Island definitely won’t be the same Club Penguin our generation knows and loves, but it will be the next big thing for our younger counterparts! As iconic parts of a generation find themselves ending, the iconic parts of a new generation are just beginning–even if they are technically revamped versions of our childhood!