Club Penguin

POV: I talk to you for 50 minutes straight about Club Penguin :)

Did you read above? Because that is literally what this is. I yap about the history and drama of Club Penguin.

A lot information regarding the history of Club Penguin was retrieved through several blogs such as this one: 
https://rocketsnail.com/blog/2011/02/21/experimenting-with-penguins

Here is a link to my favorite CPPS, Club Penguin Journey!
https://play.cpjourney.net/ 

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Want to support Thinking Sideways even more?
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2055565/support 

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Transcript

Club Penguin

 Welcome back to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Aubrey ,and it's actually just me today. Today I'm going to be yapping about Club Penguin because I don't have anybody to hold hostage during this conversation. And it is currently dead week, which means that I have chemistry finals and bio final and all that lovely stuff happening next week and all the other papers and things. And so I found that this topic would be a good little relief. To one. Finally share all this weird hidden knowledge I have in my brain over something nobody cares about. And two, I actually got to research it even more to write about this. I have like two pages of notes, so I'm going to go over. The creation of Club Penguin and where it lands today, basically. But I feel like I'm going to be talking for a long time, but we'll see. Okay, so. It all began with a man named Lance Priebe. I don't know how to say his name. Okay? Basically, he was a game creator, game designer, and he got this idea in around the year 2000, and he wanted to create a multi-player strategy game with penguins. And by the way, if I got a lot of my information from one communicating with people in game throughout the years. Two I read through a ton of his blog posts on Rocketsnail. If you're interested, I can include the link to some of it in the description if you're interested. And you think I'm just pulling this out of my ass, but so Rocketsnail is like his brand, basically. So we wanted to create a game with penguins, and he wanted something with throwing snowballs. Was the idea, right? So in the year 2000, he came up with the idea of a game called Snow Blasters, and it would revolve around penguins attacking each other and building snow forts and throwing snowballs and like having all these upgrades and things in the game to fight each other with. But Flash at the time wasn't really capable, or the internet in general really wasn't really capable of handling a program that he wanted to create. He basically creates. Experimental Penguins in the year 2000, and this was his first attempt at ever making a multiplayer game. Experimental Penguins is a very key component to this whole franchise because it's really what got him started. It is the first foundation of what he wanted to build off of for Snow Blasters. Experimental Penguins featured a format where people could log in and have names and waddle around and chat, basically. And it was very simplistic and there was like some snow cats and like some weird things and it's like really chunky looking because it's like from 2000 and he has like some version if you have a flash browser that you can also play if you go to his blog, which I did do actually, because I have a flash browser, which is kind of cool just to get a feel for what it was like back in the day. So experimental Penguins actually took off pretty well, and he was surprised that it was working this well. He ended up creating a lot of chat databases and stuff chat programs for other websites. Companies were trying to hire him for that, and so in the meantime, he decided to play around with creating Penguin Chat in 2003, and there were several additions and versions of Penguin Chat. Penguin chat was basically a more polished version of experimental penguins, and a lot of people really liked using Penguin Chat. I never used it because, um, 2003 was when I was born, ladies and gentlemen. So I was a baby, so actually not really possible. So that really took off. And behind the scenes, he was still kind of playing around with ideas with Snow Blasters, from the information he was gaining from Penguin Chat and what he had learned from experimental penguins as well. However, he completely, like, I think, coded everything for Snow Blasters, but he never released it to the public. So to this day, Snow Blasters doesn't actually exist on the internet. But that's okay. Um, also, if you go on to his blog, you can see that the logo for Snow Blasters looks like the exact same font as a Club penguin, and I just think that's kind of crazy. So in 2004, he created a four page document which eventually became Club Penguin, essentially, and he decided that his goal was to create a safe space for kids to play games online, which kind of just warms my little heart. I think that's really cute because he did do that, and he succeeded in that more than he ever really could have imagined, because he thought he was just making a tiny little penguin game. But this really, like, became a foundational step in not only my childhood, but like millions of other people's lives. Even though that sounds a little bit crazy because it's penguins, but that's the point. Okay, so he made Penguin Chat 3 in 2005. So 2004, he made the four page document kind of playing with the idea of Club Penguin, and then he created the Penguin Chat 3 in 2005. So he was working for a company and he was essentially working like part time, like in his free time on like Fridays or something on Club Penguin, because he had that kind of on the back burner. And at the rate he was going for the for where he wanted to go with it, he was projected to have it released in 2010. So I'm not sure how familiar you are with the franchise, but it was released a lot earlier than 2010, and I'll explain that. And so basically, his colleagues and everyone around him was like, okay, so Penguin chat's taken off. Clearly you have this really good idea. His company was like, you should maybe push this out a lot faster and work on this full time. So they created New Horizon Interactive, which was formed literally just to create Club Penguin. And then he got to work on it full time, which was crazy because he started working on that. Right? Like same year, 2005, that Penguin Chat three was made and he made Club Penguin Beta, which is bonkers. August 22nd of 2005, there were 15,000 people that logged on and were testers. This is essentially where the idea of having parties came from, which I thought was interesting. The dojo was in the plaza and that will be nothing to some of you, but I found that really crazy because that's not at all where it is. This was not an official launch, right? Because it's the beta. And so there was like the pet shop and the pizza parlor and the coffee shop and the dojo in the plaza, which makes no sense, but nobody really knew anything about ninjas or puffles or any of what he planned. He started working on wanting to release ninjas. The deal with the ninjas is really he just likes ninjas and he wanted to put them in the game, and so he wanted to do that before his concept of puzzles. But because of the demand later on it, it ended up flipping. And so he put he switched them and finished ninjas much later because people wanted to have pets. So the official launch for the game was October 24th in 2005, which is crazy because that's. Two months later, it launched and was incomplete. And like I said, people didn't know that it was incomplete at the time. They were just looking at what was there and going with it. They didn't know about any of his plans for the future. By March of 2006, which is approximately five months later, there were over 1 million penguins waddling around, which is crazy. He rebuilt the entire game three times in 2006. By 2007, there were more than 12 million active users. Which is crazy because that means in like. I don't know, I guess two years. Right? Roughly, uh, less than I think it's 12 million people. And I was only like four. Not even yet. So on August 1st of 2007, he made a really big decision. And this is because having 12 million active active users, by the way, put a lot of stress on the server. The cost of running the server was very expensive. He couldn't really keep up with the things that he wanted to do. He didn't have the team, the programs, the software to do this. How was he supposed to put this out to other countries, translate the game in different languages? All these kinds of things getting more close and keeping up with all of this. So he got to join Disney in August 1st of 2007. That is when Disney started to own Club Penguin. From 2007 to 2009, he spent time training the team there, and he eventually got to finally launch his Ninja project, which is cod jitsu, which is my favorite game. I think in the game he always wanted to do a game with pirates, spies and ninjas. I think he meant like a game with all three of those together, and people had no idea that this was his intention. So when the game was launched, they had no idea that the lighthouse was going to be connected to pirates and that there were going to be spies, and that the dojo was for ninjas happening. And so after he finished training them in 2007 and 2009, he left Club Penguin in 2010 so that he could work on other things. Very understandable. Club Penguin that's basically the Club Penguin I know because when he left in 2010, I was. Seven years old. And that's pretty crazy for me, because that I know for a fact is when I started playing Club Penguin, I started when I was seven, and it was really my first time ever playing an online game like that, and I got to have like my own account and everything, and I didn't really understand a lot of the game, but it was just really special to me to be able to share an online space with people. And I didn't even have to really, like, communicate with them. It was more about you just knew you were a part of a community. So Club Penguin lasted for seven more years until its shut down on March 30th of 2017. Unfortunately, I was not a part of shutdown and I wasn't a part of Operation Blackout or anything, which was this huge mission on the island, and unfortunately, I didn't ever play as much as I wanted to because of memberships gatekeeping me, because memberships are so expensive and so you can't like, play a lot of games and wear clothes and decorate your igloo without having a membership. And I had it like twice, but it was expensive, and so it felt like, I don't know, it was classist technically and Club Penguin, and from my understanding, the main reason for them shutting down Club Penguin is because they wanted to transfer the fan base over to their new game called Club Penguin Island, which flopped like big time. I never played Club Penguin Island. I think that it is shut down right now. I don't even care. I've never looked into it because. I guess the philosophy behind it is that it's 3D. Right. Club Penguin is a two dimensional game. It never appealed to me because it lost all of the nostalgia. It lost every aspect that meant something to people, because all that they really kept was that it was penguins, and that's kind of it. And that there was an island. And instead of having like its own unique assets and clothes and stuff, they kept trying to shove specific Disney ones on there, which is understandable to have some Disney things on there, given that it is owned by Disney. But from my understanding, the vast majority, if not all of the things were related back to other franchises, which is kind of just a money grab. So I never wanted to try that. I also wanted to note that when I was looking up the date for the shutdown of Club Penguin, I came across this really funny movie which is called Club Penguin. Shut down the movie and it's by Near Human Intelligence. You can find it on YouTube, so it's free. It's an hour and a half long. I think there's like even two seasons or something. I don't know, it was I didn't even finish watching it. I watched like the first ten minutes. That was not what I was expecting. I thought I was going to watch that movie, and it was going to give me a good synopsis for my little, you know, literature review going on here and give me some knowledge. But it was actually just like some dude farting around and like, playing around with the idea of like, what happened after people logged off of Club Penguin like. And it's so funny. It's like, like with gangs, the Tuba Gang or whatever, which is just like a subculture thing. That was in Club Penguin. And I can't believe he made like over an hour and a half of content of that. Um, so if you feel like you want to, like, waste some time, knock yourself out, because I'll probably finish watching it. And shout out to Stallion Polo if you're going to end up watching it. Also, because I got my Australian friend, my favorite Australian person, to just start watching it. So anyways, basically game shut down in 2017 and unfortunately I had kind of grown apart from the fan base, which means I was only ever really a part of it for a few years. But that's also, I think, a reason why it is so important to me, because it happened in such formative years of my life. I even think it was there throughout, like my trauma years and all that. Like I was growing with this game essentially, even if I, I wasn't even fully able to comprehend how amazing it was and use every aspect of the game and communicate with people and have conversations and understand how things worked. I still loved it, and I also had the DS game, so a little bit different. But I did have that. And then I also had the Wii game, which was actually kind of fire to be honest. There were some really good mini games on there, so I just like wanted to give a shout out to my little. My little moments with Club Penguin, even though it was short lived. In a few years in my life, it still is going to impact me for the rest of my life in some ways, because it's led me to where I am now in this franchise, which I will talk about. I remember having to there was this subculture in the pizza parlor where you would, like, wear a dress, and then the girls would sit in the corner and like, do the Sadie Mote, and then a guy in like a baseball cap because we were all poor and we weren't members, so we couldn't buy anything, would go up and then do the heart, and then you would both do hearts. And that just meant you were in a relationship. And like, I didn't even talk to them, I don't think. But I just kept doing that whenever I was on. I think that's funny. I also have a very core memory of the ninja hideout, which is a sub component of cod jitsu, the ninja stuff that I talked about earlier in the dojo. And I have really important memories with this, because I remember I would like play it at home and then like, I either got home before my siblings did from school and that extra time allowed me to complete getting my black belt. So see, I did actually understand enough of the game to be able to get to that point. So I got my black belt. Then I beat sensei and I got my mask. And then I just remember, like, my brother always beat me at games and that's fine and it's funny and whatever. But that's why this is such also a core moment for me is that I had done that completely on my own, and nobody taught me how to do that. Nobody showed me how to do that. My brother hadn't even done it yet. He didn't even know what was going to happen when I got my black belt. To be able to experience that on my own was like kind of life changing because I realized like. I can kind of do stuff, you know? And. I know that sounds really corny, because really all that happens is you walk into a room called the Ninja Hideout, which only people with black belts and the ninja masks can walk in there. But something about having like this, like secret access to something all special because I didn't really have, like, unleashed access to the internet or didn't even know how to use it, really, so I couldn't even, like, look up how to do these things. The fact that I had just figured it out was just so, like, magical to me that like, I was able to be a part of this game. I don't know, achieve that. I guess. I know that sounds really stupid, but whatever. The DS game was fun. Shout out. Yeah, whatever. Okay, Ninja hideout though is my bitch. Basically is what I'm getting to. However, a couple of years ago I was playing Toontown Rewritten that my brother had showed me and in my quest to download said game I came across Club Penguin Rewritten. And I didn't. I was like that. There was no way that's a thing that when it all snowballed, pun intended. Because that's when I discovered the vast world of CPPS, which is Club Penguin. Private Servers, I think, is what this stands for. 1s Um, we're going to go with it. So basically these are copies of the game. And this is life-changing, my friends, because this means I get to go back and do the things that I didn't know I could even do in the first place. Club Penguin private servers, I think, is what it is. There's like a shit ton of them, okay? And I have like a bunch of the ones I'm familiar with as well as like what the law is behind them. I'm going to give you all the tea. I've got insider knowledge because I've chatted up the creator of my favorite one, which I will also give a shout-out to. So for my understanding, Club Penguin Rewritten was one of the biggest and I think it's still probably even to this day was the biggest CPPS. There were like millions of people that were playing it. It was like really well done. I actually did play clipping when rewritten for a little bit. Um, I went like crazy because I got that like hidden nostalgia. It also was written in the AS2 style, which which I'm pretty sure stands for ActionScript two. And then there's like ActionScript three and ActionScript one. I've also heard people call it art style, but that's not actually what it stands for. But that basically is what it is, kind of in layman's terms. So the art style of the game, the higher the number means, the more modern it is, right? The more reworked and polished it is. So I really liked the part of Club Penguin rewritten. Mind you, at this time I didn't know there were even other copies out there yet. I thought this was the only one and I liked how it it genuinely just reminded me of the game I knew and loved. I didn't even know that there was another option because the years I played Club Penguin, it was never modern, it was always AS2. It wasn't ever reworked when I played Club Penguin, because a lot of the big changes started happening around 2011, and I really wasn't playing it much, if at all, at that point. So really loved Club Penguin Rewritten. I wasn't playing it super religiously, and I hadn't made any like close friendships or anything on there. I would just go on there a couple times a year and relive the childhood memes, get some coins mined for some coins or whatever, and then whatever. One time I go to log in though, and the site no longer exists. And I was like, what the hell? So that led me down a whole other rabbit hole because I was like, why is this? So I just found this kind of, oh, I do know this now, in hindsight, I've been told this by community members, but I also googled it to double check. Probably, I don't know. So three people were arrested who ran Club Penguin Rewritten. And I think that's for copyright infringement because, um, they were making money off of it, which is illegal. So they were running ads like all on the side, the side panels and stuff, which is illegal because, um, you can't just make money off of someone else's, uh, ideas and stuff. So that's really where they fucked up. And like, they tried to justify it by saying that the money, most of it was to help run the servers because the server cost is pretty expensive. Um, but they just, like, agreed to hand over the game to the police. Um, also, I, I think I saw somewhere that like, maybe they were collecting IP addresses. I'm pretty sure I saw that one of the original creators of the game was responding to this event and talking about how collecting IP addresses always backfires or something, and I was like, oh, damn, I didn't even know they were doing that. Who gives a fuck? But someone out there does. Clearly that matters to someone. I'm just too stupid to really get the point of that. That led me to discover another game, which for me is the one that changed my world of CPPS, and the way that I realized the community aspect was very much still there. I never felt that with Club Penguin rewritten, even though it was there, I just never accessed it. And I didn't for a while on New Club Penguin. But it did switch for me and I'll tell that story. So in New Club Penguin it is AS3, which is not the club Penguin I am familiar with. That is a more polished, modern, clean looking. I can't even like explain it just it kind of just looks ugly to me. I just don't like it. I don't play Club Penguin for that version of clipping one, but I played that for like a long time and I would always hop on, like for Christmas and like decorate my igloo and then like, hop on like once a year. And then one time I decided to hit the hit the ski slopes, the ski hill, and I'm sledding. The four person and I don't even sled usually. I don't really like care that much about it. And I realized, oh, every time we run this map, it's the same. These people have this map memorized. And on the four person one, there's this really tricky ice bit in the beginning, and I just couldn't figure out how they all could get that part to work or like, not hit the rock or whatever and hit the ice at like, hit the ice and then not hit the rock. And so I had like failed like a lot of times playing with these people I didn't know and wasn't saying anything to them. I was just playing alongside them. So then I asked a girl and I was like. Hey, how do I do that? And she told me how to do it. And so I kept practicing. And then that's literally where it started. I mean, because she had that whole network of friends already. And so then I was already just talking to all of them and friending them. And I did not know how important that moment would be to me, like what it is right now, but crazy, honestly, how stupid little penguin game can can connect you to people like that on like other sides of the world and everything too. I then became a chronic sweater and would always try to be on top of the leaderboards, and because I would just want to hang out with my friends on there, and I mean, I would spend like so many hours sledding and I had this thing memorized like, I could do it in my sleep. Um, but it wasn't even about getting the coins. It wasn't really even about the leaderboard. It was just about being there with these people that. I didn't really like know and they didn't really know me, but like, we were able to, like have this common experience of loving Club Penguin and being there for the same reason. Um, which is kind of just to relive that feeling of our childhood. And there's just something beautiful about that. I think people from all over the world, being able to share in that experience is really beautiful. So a little corny, however, also something to note. New Club Penguin I am not advertising it. They run ads. Also, I'd like to note which like I said, is illegal. I'm pretty fucking sure, so I'm not quite sure. Um, I haven't played in a fat minute. It could be down right now. I don't think it is. Wait, no, it's definitely not. I was getting mascot tracking updates today, so. No, I don't go on there. It's very modern. It's AS3 ActionScript three style. Uh, also, you have to, I think have a flash browser or you need to download the app on your computer in order to play it, which is just kind of weird. And I think maybe that's how they have gotten away with the ads. I think that's why they've gotten away with it, to be honest. Something about that. I don't know anything about coding. I don't know anything about the legal shit, but I think that might be the reason why they've lasted this long, because it's been several years. I've had my account for several years. Um, there are also quite terrible mods on Nuclear Penguin. Not like they do crazy things that I'm aware of. Um, they are sketchy and they like, use their privileges a lot to flex on people, which is weird and like, I don't know, they also just like, don't do a great job at being mods to like keeping everyone safe in a way, which is the point, right? The original goal for Club Penguin was to create a safe space for kids, but it's interesting because now the demographic of people that play Club Penguin are no longer kids. The demographic of people that are playing CPS like myself, are people that are my age and older. Generally speaking, it's very rarely you run across an actual kid in the game, and when you do, everyone is very like cognizant of that and respectful of that fact. So that's another thing. I didn't write that down, but I'm just now remembering that, like, I'm not playing with kids here and playing with. People my age that share this. I guess I should have said that a lot earlier, because now it just sounds kind of creepy that I'm like, I made this really good connection with children. That's not what I'm saying. Um, they're like my age and older, actually. So the thing about Nuclear Penguin, they have those mods that don't really do a great job in my opinion. I know they have a lot of players, like a lot of people in there and a lot of servers, and so that's very expensive. They have a lot of like igloo stuff and all kinds of things. And like, I don't know, that's got to be a lot to manage, but like the filter and stuff is like a little bit too lenient probably. Um, because I think there are a lot more younger kids on Nuclear Penguin then a lot of the other apps. And I think that's because of the more modern art style is actually, I think, why it is more appealing to kids now because they don't have the nostalgia backed. With the old versions where the people my age do have that. Okay. Also, it was in my process of playing. 1s That version of Club Penguin that I learned about Club Penguin Online. I never played this version. I couldn't find a lot of information online about it. I do know that it does not exist anymore. I'm pretty sure that the FBI shut it down because there were pedophiles and like. Corrupt things happening on there. And like there were like no mods and like no moderation or control of anything. So you can imagine how that gets really sketchy. Just thought I'd shove that in there that like there's clearly a huge spectrum here of audiences in this community. And different CPGs cater to different aspects of the community. So I think I grew that tight knit family, if you will, with people my age on New Club Penguin and that really like, I mean, then I was able to communicate with them on discord and then not just they would tell me about things because they're more in the loop that I am. Then I was logging on a lot more frequently because I actually wanted to talk to people. And then that's when I found out about CP L, which is clipping and legacy. I went cuckoo crazy for Club Penguin Legacy. Loved it, thought it was a really fun game. It was that original art style that Club Penguin Rewritten had. The only thing was the time that I joined it was, I think down for a while or something, or like it was kind of just starting back up or like it was new. And so there wasn't a lot of stuff, like there were no puzzles. And like a lot of the things that you would want to do when revisiting this kind of a game weren't an option yet, because they were not coded in yet, and there was no foreseeable future as to when those things would be added. So I was taken aback a little bit. So I would very frequently hop between New Club Penguin and Club Penguin Legacy at this time. And that was all fine and dandy until one day people told me about Club Penguin Journey. Club Penguin Journey is the best CPPS on the market right now. It's not on the market because they're not breaking the law, actually... it's so good. It's perfection. I mean, Amman is the creator of it, and he communicates with the community and the whole style is AS2. So it's classic, it's nostalgic. The filter is pretty good. Moderators are there. They're on top of their shit. They protect people. I mean, they listen to people. They take care of business. And that makes it comfortable in there because you can build a relationship also with these mods and know that the vibes are, are always intact. Even if you get some weird people that come in, you know that they'll get kicked out right away and it won't ruin the game, because that's just the dynamic of the people that play this version of Club Penguin and stick around are good people, generally speaking. Um, they're very frequent updates, which is really cool. The discord is always poppin. There are no ads, so they're not breaking the law. They also have to just put in a shit ton of work for original parties. I was there for the Beta Party, not the Alpha Party. The Beta party. I mean, they had to like completely recode card jitsu and the sledding and stuff because of the format of what the original game was coded in or something, because I think of like flash switching over, I don't really know. But they also like add stamps and there's puffles. And they did all of this at an exponential rate because I had joined Club Penguin Legacy and stuff wasn't really moving on. They're very slow to update, and you couldn't even like, say much because the filter was so strict and the mods were like kind of non-existent. And so I really loved how active Club Penguin Journey was, even though it was less people on their. It was the type of people that are on there and the energy that's on there is just so much better. And I'm just so grateful for that community. Honestly, it's it's been such a nice little safe haven. And I know I've spent probably an absurd amount of hours in the game, but I don't even really care because. It's just a community that I think is worth being a part of for me. Um, it just makes me happy. Also, it is through Club Penguin Journey that I learned about some other drama in the CP community. I had the insider knowledge, kind of not really, but kind of of Club Penguin legacy. Basically, there's a lot of drama, apparently, behind the scenes. The moderator is power hungry, and there was this whole crazy thing that happened, and I have been waiting to tell this story. Okay, I was there for this kid. Settle down. I was here for this. Okay? There was a little notification, a little vent, if you will, stating that if you partook in this Q testing, then you would get an exclusive purple hard helmet in the game that would never come back. And it was like a one-time thing. And so I was there. I was there in the queue. The queue kept breaking. There were so many people I can't get in, blah blah, blah. Um, the second you get in, you're kicked out or whatever. So I get in and then I get the helmet and there's a background. Um, the background was funny. I will give them that. And I just like, I was like, yes, I made it, I helped them, whatever. Got my background, got my helmet, whatever. Never thought of it. Then I found out what really was happening during that testing. It wasn't actually Q testing necessarily. It kind of was, but it was actually just. Manipulation. So actually, behind the scenes, for my understanding, there was one person with a lot of power and they didn't want to give the power to other moderators. And the other moderators were mad because they wanted to have more control. So they ran this Q testing and then notified the girl in power that they have like a huge chunk of the fan base, like in their hands, all of their accounts in one area, and that they could, like, ban everybody right now if she didn't hand over the controls, and that this would basically cause the downfall of the whole game because everyone would be really pissed off. So she. So we were hostages, actually. Um, 1s here I was thinking I was just getting my little purple hard helmet in my background, but actually, I was a hostage. So dramatic. I told you, it's crazy. So, um, 1s apparently they also used that to then take those controls that she handed over and fear that they would, like, ban the entire fan base. And then they banned people that, like, disagreed with them or staff members that they didn't like because now they have more control than what they had. So they perma banned people and then they they played that off as a lot of people were like, oh, I got banned. And so I don't think I was banned. But I do know some people, some of my friends were randomly banned and they got their accounts back and everything. But the thing with that is it was a ban cover up. So not only were we held hostage, but we also were used to cover up the fact that they permanently banned people that they didn't like or that they disagreed with, um, because that would kind of blend in with the rest of the crowd that was like, I was banned, but I'm back. So everyone kind of just forgot about it. That was crazy. Is that not just bonkers? Because that once. Okay, another little random factoid moment with Aubry is that there's another CPS that was called. I'm. I'm like, very certain that this one does not exist anymore. Um, pretty sure it was shut down Club Penguin Today. And if it does exist, don't go there. Do not sign up because, um, they track your IP, apparently. Um, so don't do that. And so they track your IP. Um, also there's drama. So one of the either admins or moderators, I can't really remember. They were like coding in game and there's outfit slots saved outfit slots. That's an aspect of the game so that you can quickly switch between outfits that you like. And when they were playing around with the coding, they had to use a placeholder text in the spot of one of these. Outfit sluts, and they chose the N-word and little did they know. I think it was an outfit also that was saved with it. I don't know. I wasn't able to find this because they were trying to frantically delete everything. 1s So I joined their discord just to get all the tea, I was just lurking. One of the mods R admins had put that in there like deliberately created that. Character, the outfit, the name they type that in, and they didn't know this, but that would appear on everybody's penguin. They thought that that was just a placeholder and that nobody would see them do that. But it actually just like openly shared it across the entire game. And a lot of people saw it. So obviously people were like really upset with that. They tried to cover their tracks, deleting messages, um, like. Silencing people that were calling them out, and they refused to ban the admin or moderator that did it. 1s Instead, they just like demoted him. I think that they weren't admin and then they were just a mod, which is just crazy. And then they were trying to say like, oh, sorry. It's like in my country, a very frequent word that we throw around. And then people were like, name the country. And then they said, you're up. And it's like Europe is not a country. 1s And they were also like, yeah, well, I didn't know it was bad. Um, and people were like, well, you can't even tell us. The country that is allegedly this is a part of the culture. And one and two, I was told that this person is also not a person of color. That makes it 5 million times worse. They also tried to blame it not only on their culture, but also on their server provider doing maintenance. It just sounds ridiculous. They were basically saying that like someone was doing maintenance on their server, like their provider or whatever, and that it must have like glitched or, um, that they must have typed that in or I don't understand coding. Obviously they thought something malfunctioned or whatever, but what's a little funny is that I was informed that they use the exact same server provider as Penguin Journey, 2s which would mean that that would have happened on Club Penguin Journey too, or a similar problems would be happening if that was the case. So actually, um, they're just racist, actually. So crazy. Um, which is why we support Club Penguin Journey, because great mods, they're doing it for the fact that they love doing it. They're doing it for the right reasons. They're not doing it for money and CPR in CP. And I do think those started off as passion projects. But I think people get crazy when they realize the power of the community because it's so many people, how easy it is to profit off of. People that are trying to relive nostalgia and all that their childhoods. You know, it's it's really gross to try to capitalize off of that. But I also understand. Why it turned that way. So I don't think that this one is going to turn that way. If it does, that means that all of the mods and stuff I know now are no longer working then for them, because none of them would stand for that. I highly recommend if you used to play the game. Or always wanted to play the game but weren't allowed to. This is a safe one to try Club Penguin journey and you can see me waddling around on there sometimes. My name is just  a u b r I e l l e. And I'm usually in a dinosaur onesie with a cowboy hat on, if that's gonna help you. So feel free to say hi if that's your shit. Um, and you're you're a real one if that's how we end up meeting. Basically, my takeaways from one living through this franchise. Also researching it, I have a few different things I've learned. One of which is that Club Penguin has a shit ton of history and lore, and I didn't even get to talk about a lot of it. But there's so many intricate things that. Foreshadow other things happening and like, okay, remember when I talked about Snow Blasters being his first idea in the year 2000 and how he just wanted it to be a snowball war game? That's why there are snow forts in Club Penguin. It's to pay respects to his roots, what he originally wanted. And. 1s The fact that it just morphed into something completely different. But just as. Beautiful, if not probably a lot more perfect. And also, I will say, like the years after he left, it started to deteriorate. Specifically after 2011, Disney kind of fucked it up when they switched it to ActionScript three and they made it modern and they basically kind of redesigned the whole game and it didn't feel like the same game anymore. He was always authentic though, and he always kept with the same goals and everything, so I. Stan, this whole all these people that were involved with this part, the original part, I really think that what they did is amazing. Also, I learned that CPPS are very messy, 1s in case that was not evident by the stories that I told. Um, which just to just to point out again, these are just a few of this the like probably hundreds of them that there are these are like a lot of notable ones, but these are just a select few. So also if you are looking into them and you are getting into this, be careful about your login and your IP and whatever is a VPN and all that shit like clipping my journey though. You're good. You got my word. You got a man's word on that one. I've also learned that there are good people all throughout the world, and I know that sounds really corny and generic and generalizable and whatever, but that is the truth. I've made so many international friends this way. I have a friend in Australia, Romania, one that's from Poland and Ecuador, one that's in Canada, one that's in Spain right now. It's just so cool to be able to talk to these people. I know people in Brazil, I know people in Portugal, I know so many different people. And. That to me is Club Penguin is getting to waddle around and share that experience with people that might not even speak the same language as you, but it doesn't matter. And that's that's so beautiful to me. I've also learned that passion projects will always win in the long run, because that's what keeps you going, man. Yeah, there's a money component, but these people at Club Penguin Journey are doing it because they love to do it. They're not power hungry. They're doing it because they love to do it, and they're doing it to bring it back to the people that want to relive it. Also, I want to give a little shout out to our boy Lance Priebe or whatever. Rocketsnail, right? He's still kicking it. He's still making stuff and his blogs and shit. Like it's interesting stuff to read. Honestly, I lost a couple hours today and I have finals to do, but. But there's a good little, little break. He's creating a game called Box Critters right now, which is like the exact same art style. Believe it or not, you can look that up to. It's not available right now. He did run the Alpha test, but that has been completed. And then right now he's estimating that the beta will be run in or released in 2024. So I hope that that's the case. But also he's not rushing himself because he's doing this because he loves it. I also want to make a little note to all of like the subcultures and the lower that's also been created within the game, and that it's also grown with the game and shaped the game itself like people wanted to talk about. If you could tip the iceberg, if that was possible, what would happen if you tip the iceberg? People would contemplate a new element being released the shadow element. Because in this picture in the ski village, there's this and this reflection, and this means this. The stone in the center of this amulet means that. And people would go crazy with all these stories. And that was also just another fun thing, is that like, it actually, some of them became true because the developers took note of that and then incorporated a version of that into the game because they cared about the kids that were playing it. And I think that's really cool. That's another element is like, you feel like the fan base was kind of being heard, even though they were they were being heard and not really knowing it because they thought they were just predicting something. But in reality, the developers were like, it's actually kind of a good idea. Why didn't we think of that? But on discord and stuff. For a club penguin journey. Like you can submit ideas and all kinds of things, and a lot of them get implemented. I mean, I've seen so many people design clothes and things and ideas and all that, and some of them make it in and they actually like, listen and get feedback and adapt and fix things and work with the people in the community to build the community itself. I think that pretty much wraps up my TED talk on Club Penguin. If I held you hostage this whole time, 1s just like Club Penguin Legacy did with their fan base for the Purple Heart helmet, then you, my friend, are a real one because there are not many people that want to listen to me yap about this for like 50 minutes. There are good people out there. Take a minute to learn something weird and random and niche that seems unrelated to whatever you're working on. I had a lot of fun making this episode. Take care of yourself and I will see you later. Bye!