I came across an article on Mashable about Club Penguin’s success and I just had to share it with you. It boggles my mind how big this online game has become – 150 million profiles created by kids from 190 countries.
For those of you who have never heard of Club Penguin – it’s a space where kids can play games, participate in events and socialize through regular contests, meetups, concerts and digital events. It also has a digital newspaper that they claim is read by more than the New York Times…
Safety is a huge component of Club Penguin’s site. They even have a staff of more than 200 safety and security personnel who wander around the site as Club Penguin characters and monitor the interactions among users. Now, if that is not a good plot for a Douglas Copeland novel, I don’t know what would be? Imagine the virtual/real interactions among some of that staff? Sorry, I’m coming off the tracks – back to Club Penguin.
Now, for the education content. Club Penguin does claim that it has some educational qualities, but we would squarely place this in the “edutainment” category. The Mashable article quotes Lane Merrifield, the EVP of Disney Online Studios: “Merrifield says the site actually helps kids improve their typing, reading and writing since so much of the site is understood through language. Auto-complete and predictive sentences help kids put together simple phrases and even learn new languages.” Hmmm…
Here’s the article published on Mashable.
