Disney-owned Club Penguin has serious staying power with my tween. Meaning of course that after I plunked down money for a membership she didn’t immediately get bored with it. On a recent Spring Break trip, she was adamant that she needed to bring her laptop so she wouldn’t miss the April Fool’s party at the site. Since she’s been fairly fickle with other social sites, I became curious about just what is so special about Club Penguin. Here’s a short version of our Q&A session:
What are the best features of Club Penguin?
“There are a lot of different rooms and they are very creative. My favorite is the pizza parlor. The best part is that you can talk with people. The special events and holiday parties are done really well. During the parties, the entire site changes and there are limited time features.”
Why do you prefer Club Penguin to other virtual worlds?
“Webkinz is not that good with other players. It’s really only you. The chat is not good. With Webkinz you just take care of your pet, build a house and play games by yourself … You can’t move your character around and talk. With Club Penguin, you can spend a few hours just wandering around and talking to people.”
How often do you visit Club Penguin and why do you go back?
“About twice a week. Mainly to visit my Club Penguin friends.”
What could Club Penguin do better?
1) “The pirate Rockhopper is really fun and sells interesting items. But whenever he comes you can’t figure out which server he is on and if you do the server is always full.”
2) “The minigames are the same all the time. There are only about two that produce good coins. I’d like more games that produce money and that you can play longer.”
3) “They do a great job on the big parties. But some of the smaller parties are not as good.”
As my daughter gave me a tour of the Club Penguin landscape we came across another aspect of the world, the secret agent. My daughter has obtained secret agent status. This means she has been deputized to help keep Club Penguin fun and safe. It seems that Club Penguin has managed to bring “cool kid” status to what is essentially a hall monitor position. Secret Agents are rewarded with a cool gadget phone, secret game tips and accessories. The agents go on secret missions and have access to the HQ. In short, Club Penguin has a brilliant strategy for building loyal community members. When we visited the HQ, there were dozens of penguins happily dancing and shouting out comments about sightings of Rockhopper and an orange puffle.
Club Penguin seems to have achieved what most social sites can only dream of … a destination site with all the stickiness of peanut butter and an enthusiastic group of brand ambassadors committed to the site’s success.
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April 23rd, 2008 at 10:25 am
My son is a tween who is begging for a membership to Club Penguin. My husband and I told him he would have to wait and play the free stuff for awhile and then see if he is still interested in joining (see if there is any sticky peanut butter). Plus, we wanted time to investigate before we just said yes. This is great Q&A for us… point for Mav (he’s winning anyway, just for being so cute and persistant)… can’t… hold… out… much… longer…
P.S. interesting side note: this was posted on his birthday and guess what one of his birthday requests was? Here come’s the next Secret Agent Man!
August 7th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
lol