Banner image of an early block layout of a restaurant in the map.

An MMO fanserver tailored to over 11,000,000 players.

In 2005, Club Penguin opened its doors and set a new standard for children's MMOs. There were over 330,000,000 accounts created, and the game was played in over 190 different countries, however the original game closed in 2017 and left an entire community displaced.

Club Penguin Rewritten was a recreation of the beloved Disney game that has touched upon millions of childhoods around the globe. The purpose of the server was to create a safe but enjoyable experience for those that wish to experience the nostalgia of their childhoods or meet new friends across the globe. Our goal was to keep users coming back on a regular basis with weekly content updates, regular events and frequent community engagement.

Catering to over 11,000,000 registered users allowed us to learn a lot about running an MMO, including using analytics to study gameplay patterns, pushing out content updates to a live audience and the best practices to keep our users safe while retaining the practices and standards that the original Club Penguin had.

Core Responsibilities

Conducted research and information gathering to troubleshoot and improve content quality for over 10 million registered users.
Managed all of the tasks pertaining to weekly content updates.

Balanced and adjusted gameplay experiences to increase critical and commercial success of product.
Engaged with large userbase to gather feedback within the community and implement new ideas in an efficient and effective way.

The community meeting up with one of the game's mascots, Rockhopper.

Players showing their support for Earth Day.

Players gathering together to get a community achievement.

Different factions of players battling against each other during the event.

Players forming a line through the town.

Halloween 2019 where players could turn themselves into a living sled, based off of The Night of the Living Sled.

An Item of the Month page which was introduced to the monthly item catalog, for players that wanted more exclusive items.

A Halloween variant of Item of the Month.

Winter catalogue design for the January 2019 Penguin Style.

UI design created to allow players to customise their clothing for the Penguin Play Awards event.

An introduction of the global prize system which allowed the community to work together to earn prizes.

Team selection screen allowing players to pick a side for the duration of the Penguin Games event.

Live screenshot of the leaderboard which allowed players to compete to earn an exclusive medal.

Graphical redesign of fan-favourite minigame Cart Surfer, which also added a new game mode and leaderboard.

A schedule for the updates for December 2019.

ARTICLES

• Oct 29, 2017 – Affinity Magazine
• Aug 22, 2018 – New Statesman
• Feb 7, 2019 – Kotaku
• Apr 1, 2020 – GameRevolution
• Apr 3, 2020 – Capital FM
• Apr 3, 2020 – NME
• Apr 21, 2020 – Study Breaks Magazine
• Oct 13, 2020 – Study Breaks Magazine

QUOTES

"Some particular fans decided that 'just because a company pulls a plug out of a game, doesn’t mean it has to die'. These fans formed Club Penguin Rewritten (CPR), and set out to keep the game they loved alive. They rewrote the code for Club Penguin and created a replica of the game at its height, roughly around 2008. They launched their game on February 12, 2017, almost a month before the true Club Penguin shut down.

After the shutdown, CPR slowly but surely gained followers, reaching 100,000 accounts in the following April and a staggering 1,000,000 on October 4th, 2017. The company rallied behind this success, thrilled that fellow Club Penguin lovers could continue to play the game that reminded them so much of their childhoods."

Marcus Cooley – "Save Club Penguin: The Game We Know and Love" , Affinity Magazine

"I spoke to one user, Katie, who echoes the positive experience described by the creators. Katie is 19, lives in St Louis, Missouri, and played Club Penguin as a kid, from around age eight. ( . . . ) She’s enjoyed using the Rewritten version, calling it 'very nostalgic and calming', and saying that there are actually some elements that make it better than the original, in particular, the fact that everyone is a “member” without having to pay.

Previously Club Penguin was sustained on paid memberships, which gave certain users special access that other users had to win coins (via in-app games) to even dream of getting. The absence of this is another plus. 'There’s no competing between people for items you can get or games you can play or anything like that,' Katie says. She feels this creates a less hostile environment, often inseparable from online multiplayer games."

Sarah Manavis – "A rebooted Club Penguin is giving millennials their first dose of digital nostalgia" , New Statesman

College and high school students flock to revisit their childhood as well as help younger children experience the nostalgic landmark for the very first time. Club Penguin Rewritten is an online place where nostalgia and wonder collide to create normalcy in a COVID-19-ridden world. ( . . . )

Club Penguin Rewritten is more than a nostalgic game for adults who want to revisit their childhood and bored children simply looking to fill a social void. Club Penguin Rewritten is now a monument to a community, encouraging safe behavior while showing how joy can be found even in the turbulence of isolation, reminding us all that we will eventually waddle on through life — together.

Summer Brotman – "Club Penguin In The Time Of COVID-19: Keep Calm And Waddle On" , Study Breaks Magazine

The Community Made A Real Change!

During my time on Rewritten, the community came together to make a positive impact in the world.

Every year for the holiday season, the original Club Penguin ran an event called Coins for Change. This event encouraged users to donate their virtually earned in-game coins to influence real life charitable donations.

We continued this tradition in Rewritten by having a Coins for Change event. During this event, booths and stands would appear on the island asking the users to donate their virtual coins. At the end of the event, we would donate on behalf of the community towards three different causes. The donation amount for each cause was determined by how many coins the players had donated to each category.

There were three categories that the players could contribute to, these were for medical help, protecting the earth and building homes. Some of the charities donated to included WWF, Make-a-Wish, Lumos, Team Seas and Habitat for Humanity.

The team also hosted Devcasts – Live podcasts where players could join the staff members in-game, ask questions and occasionally win items. These streams were a great platform to speak with our community, which in turn allowed us to run charity events while were used to help raise funds and awareness for ongoing causes in real life.

The kindness and generosity of the community was unmatched – allowing the Devcasts to raise over $18,000 for causes such as Make-A-Wish, Comic Relief, the Australian Wildfire Relief Fund, the Marie Curie Foundation and the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic.