@DucksAndCatnip Atleast you have enough intelligence to find the like button on your own reply, but not enough to find what part of the sentence is a common saying
I think the fact club penguin was so “safe” and “fun” is what made Herbert’s entrance that much more exciting. The first indicator that there was a malevolent presence in the land was unnerving, but kept things interesting!
then it eventually led to operation blackout where the most amount of evil the island had seen occurred and it was genuinely one of the most memorable moments
Chris' opinions on: Club Penguin daytime lasting 24/7/365: yeah, that's fine Club Penguin total solar eclipses lasting 5 days: yeah, that astronomically makes no sense
@@GumSkyloard Imagine a realistic simulation of the day and night of the south pole in Club Penguin, the summer solstice party instead of Christmas or a parody of Midwinter Day in June.
I mean, yeah, it's also astronomically possible to have 24/7/365 daylight - Club Penguin might just be set on a tidally locked planet, like how the moon's mostly tidally locked to us on Earth
When i saw astro barrier… i really begged the fucking world to give me back my club penguin. We will never get to experience this again. The diving. The ice fishing. The coffee bean bags being thrown in your face. ASTRO BARRIER. Even mancala was cool. I will forever cherish this game and even if its all solo, i want it back. Every bit of it, in working order as it was intended. I really want club penguin :(
The “Was I Wrong” segments made this video really great and helped stop it from being too negative. It was really interesting hearing what kind of compromises were made when implementing these features.
That's why they were there! I have no interest in making a video that's nothing about complaints. A video with a clickbait-y title like this only makes sense to me if there's self-reflection.
13:00 The sudden paywalling of every minigame with the release of stamps still to this day has left a very bitter memory in me. It was the main reason why I stopped playing Club Penguin around that time when I was like 11 or so, I couldn't play pretty much anything I used to love anymore. It's also the one thing that I can't ever not think of, whenever talking about our memories of Club Penguin with friends.
When your player base is mainly young children, putting a paywall in suddenly isn't going to get you more money because the parents of those children aren't suddenly going to buy a monthly subscription to a game just for more minigames levels, if they wouldnt have for clothes, furniture, or extra puffle colours.
i came here to say just that. while i was never too empty-handed when it came to memberships, at around the time the paywalls were added was when i rarely ever got a membership, if at all, and it was honestly not the same game anymore. took a lot of fun out of the game. i'm so glad private servers exist, but i still get anxious seeing that little membership icon in certain games tbh.
Chris, I'm shocked your issue with the eclipse was the length of the thing and not the fact that the sun is being eclipsed by a supposed moon. A moon which, to this point, had never shown itself since there's no night time. So Club Penguin's world has a moon which shows itself once a year for five days then shoots off to God knows where for the remaining 360 days.
ill be honest, i didnt even know the darkness of the island during halloween was caused by a solar eclipse lol. i just absolutely loved the atmosphere of halloween and never really thought about why its suddenly dark outside
As a kid I just assumed it was the weather, I think that 'this looks cool' was more important than consistent lore. If it was an educational game I could see it being more important not to mislead kids about eclipses but Club Penguin really wasn't.
I'm someone that's literally a child, I miss it too (I played one of those copies after club penguin shut down then the website was ceised by the Police) 💀
@@Cumbag I think that if Club Penguin was to magically come back, the people to play it would only be the generation that grew up with it, basically people in their 20s, for nostalgia. It would be a game to chill and relax, meet and talk to new people, hang out in-game, etc haha
I definitely agree with the last point! Locking more things behind memberships seemed to lead to the eventual downfall, at least in my experience. I remember circa 2014 when the clothing catalog got to a point where basically all you could only buy without a membership was a green cap and an orange shirt with a star. I'm definitely no financial advisor but this definitely felt like a step in the wrong direction.
It was definitely membership exclusivity for sure. Being that I essentially grew up along side Club Penguin, I hit 18 when the original Club Penguin was taken offline in favor of Club Penguin Island. Growing up parallel to the game, I felt as though the older both it and I got the worse it felt, directly felt like growing up. Obviously in my teen years I stopped playing it as I grew apart from it but the feeling of playing it every once in a while always came around. Y'know... Nostalgia and all that. Like Chris Hendricks said himself; I understood the idea of monetizing what is essentially and otherwise free game, I understood locking content behind paywalls to get people to pay, but the greed of the membership system is what took it down imho. When the only thing you can essentially do without a membership is wear like 2 outfits, yeah, it feels a bit rough on ya. I don't remember the specifics but if I remember correctly you also were limited to the bare minimum in other aspects too. Regular Igloo, certain games were limited, Red and Blue Puffles only(you kept the ones you bought while on the membership but couldn't buy the others without). It definitely made the game feel devoid of fun when the only way to was to pay.
@@legowar177 I mean it began like that and sorta ended with that. They did add more clothes but by the time it happened it was too late and was in rotation iirc.
It’s interesting you mentioned not wanting to humanize penguins, because I feel like the post-Disney Club Penguin did the opposite of that, trying its best to make the penguins as close to humans as possible
In Club penguin island it was weird that all the characters had different body shapes, it was probably just to make it easier to differentiate them from normal penguins but still looks strange, Jet Pack Guy and Rockhopper being big and buff, Dot being skinny and curvy, Gary and Rookie being skinny as well etc. At least their voices matched perfectly with the characters imo
I think the more they started humanizing the penguins (with a more focus on hairs and pop songs and stuff) the more corporative the whole thing starting to feel honestly. It especially was more noticeable after Disney bought Club Penguin. I spent most of my childhood playing through the Disney era of Club Penguin, but recently after taking a look at fragments of what it used to be, I really wish I was there to witness it; classic Club Penguin looks and feels so charming.
I feel like the introduction of animal-based puffles really added to the unsettling humanization Same with the high school and to a lesser extent the skatepark
I played mostly pre-Disney and I definitely felt like there was a lack of restraint when it came to adding humanized elements to Club Penguin after they were bought. Though I think in a way it was inevitable that they'd eventually have to sacrifice a little artistic integrity for the sake of keeping the player base happy with new content, especially those paying with memberships to keep the server afloat.
yes! i was also a post-disney acquisition kid and i loved the game so much i never really thought too hard about how things used to be. when i signed up for CPR before club penguin shut down and loved the old style equally, and honestly found that i missed things from both ends of the spectrum. i wanted some old clothing items but liked the newer ones too etc. at the end of the day it was clear to me (despite the cash grabs that came later) there were a lot of passionate people working on it throughout *everything* , trying to create new and fun things all the time which meant a lot :) ..but i was also a spoiled kid who got membership from the day i created my account lol
Club penguin meant so much to us, i still miss it even as a grown man, its amazing how a simple chat room became such a pure and fun childhood memory for so many people. As someone who isn’t american or christian i remember how as a kid i got to know other holidays like halloween and Christmas, for the first time, through club penguin events and ive been waiting for them to come even though i wasn’t celebrating these holidays in real life. Damn i miss these times.
You can play on the biggest CPPS (Club Penguin Private Server) out at the moment called NewCP. It's a full remake and fully active fan made rebuild of the game and they host tons of parties and everything. Almost 2mil players have registered so far.
@@gabbydoodle1 This one won’t get shut down. The reason CPO & CPR were shut down was because they were braking laws and regulations Disney require to keep up servers running. CPR broke copyright law and were stealing money for personal gain for their ad revenue and CPO had no moderate or family friendly requirements. Both went against Disney’s policies and several laws so Disney shut them down. NewCP breaks zero laws or regulations and is the only one to likely be standing in the very end since they oblige by all requirements to run the game legally.
Early CP had such a great style. I feel like sometimes people don’t realize sometimes it’s not always what you do that makes something great, it’s also what you DONT do.
@@rosestar1324I'm not kidding I was so confused when I started seeing people use that abbreviation in such horrible contexts. Had no idea why they would make Club Penguin illegal.
Honestly now that you mention it the thing about the penguins having hair makes a lot of sense but I can't imagine not having the sidetied and flutterby variations in the game, they're so iconic😭😭
I feel like a lot of what you said is what led to the eventual downfall of Club Penguin. When so much was locked behind a paywall, it discouraged a lot of the fun and the vibe of everything became almost gatekeepy. It seemed less like a little extra incentive and more of a "What can we do to get every last penny out of players?" ...which I also felt during the Disney-sponsored parties. It didn't feel like they were being made for the spirit and the party and fun of the players, but another facet of marketing for Disney. To me this goes hand in hand with something you hinted at with the wigs section as well; the more humanized Club Penguin became, the less of that escape it felt. The addition of a mall, dog and cat puffles, and penguins becoming more and more like people really made it feel like the charm was being sapped out of the game, and what led me to stop playing. I'll always have fond memories of the earlier years though (:
Agreed, I eventually quit Club Penguin as a child because my parents wouldn’t support the membership fees. And at that point if you weren’t a member there was basically nothing to do besides replaying the same first levels of mini games over and over again.
I LOVED THIS so much fun! The thing on "no human voice" helped people like me from Brazil understand more the game without english people talking so much (also I learned a lot of english because I needed to read it a lot and search the words to understand!) I am now a creative person and love to see how our decisions may or not be great at the time and why we should talk to everyone and see other ideas, good to see how you learned from all those perspectives :D
Man, I feel ya with the "humanizing penguins too much" point. I love when media has conventionally unpopular animals and makes them sympathetic but all too often they fall into the trap of making them WAY too human-like. I mean, look at the bees from the Bee Movie. they don't feel like bees, they feel like creepy little imps. They have TEETH! And those human eyes! I love the Halloween info too, the implications of how eclipses work in Club Penguin's world are charmingly weird. Halloween's all about being weird!
You know what? I'll give them credit where its due by keeping the proportions the same for male and female penguins the same and not doing the crap in media where they obviously make the female anthro characters much more humanized and with curves.
I agree with your criticism of teeth in the bee movie, but human eyes are infinitely more expressive than bee eyes are - from an animation standpoint it makes a lot of sense to make that change, because it makes it much easier to convey emotion in a way almost any viewer can understand, I don’t think the movie would’ve been as successful as it was without that change. But the teeth are entirely unnecessary and creepy.
I still remember Club Penguin Rewritten introducing Herbert as a mascot who visited on Halloween along with Klutzy. It was cool and all, but the room was full of people begging for him to step on them
"a solar eclipse for 5 days!? that would be astronomically impossible!" *3 minutes ago* "we don't have a day/night cycle there's no night all year round"
i agree with the hair, i think it would’ve been cooler if instead of getting actual hair you styled the feathers on top of the penguin head that replicated actual hair styles, and that would match with the penguin color of course, could even get it dyed too
I love how (possibly unintentionally) when he mentions his childhood obsession with Astronomy preventing him wanting the solar eclipse to go ahead, Lurking in the Dark kicks in, music making him out to be a villain!
@@ChrisHendricks Brilliant! Out of interest did you get the chance to compose much of the music for the Halloween parties? Have very fond memories of the music from them.
As for the night time issue, I think it would've been cool if the island stayed dark from Halloween thru New Years (Halloween spookiness, Christmas lights, and fireworks are all best at night), and then explained away as a fact of the polar solar cycle where half the year is day and the other half is night👀
I agree as well. Honestly, I loved it when Club Penguin was night and would been happy if lasted half the year. Tho, I was a nerdy kid who likely would have preferred if the Polar Night lasted from March to August.
The wigs worked for me because it felt like putting barbie clothes on a dumpy stuffed animal. The penguins ALREADY looked silly-putting super elaborate, pretty outfits on them was already goofy looking! So why not have fun with it and use the hair and clothes as wish fulfillment 😂
As a somewhat older Club Penguin player (2007), I experienced some passionate emotions when I revisited Club Penguin to discover pop songs with vocals. Up to this point, due to the PSA missions and the weekly comics they would post on the site, I had always seen penguins as moving, voiceless comic characters. It was jarring, and almost "too Disney" to suddenly hear these voices in the game. I never really came to like them, but they were well made, and the newer generation of club penguin players seemed to really enjoy them, so that's good at least. I will never like the addition of teeth though. *shudders* P.S. It was a delight to discover your channel. Club Penguin inspired significant growth in me as an artist when I was only 8-11 years old and still have very fond memories of playing the game, enjoying the music, and drawing my own comics. Learning bits about Club Penguin's creative process in my adulthood is some of the most fascinating and satisfying things I've had the pleasure of experiencing. Thank you always for sharing, Chris. Love and respect from one artist to another
You're welcome! And I can totally relate. There were many times when I'd read a character from a comic strip, but then when I'd see an animated version, the voice didn't match what was in my head. (Archie was bad for this.)
You made Astro Barrier?? That one was my favorite and was very influential for me! It was the first time I noticed the game development concept of introducing a mechanic in a somewhat simple space and then expanding on it while mixing it with other previous mechanics to increase variety and difficulty. Even to this day as I'm trying to break into the independent game development sphere, Ive made multiple astro barrier clones as a way to learn new development environments like Game Maker, Godot, Gameboy Homebrew, Pico-8, etc. Oh also in my opinion you were right about the pay wall thing. I don't think cutting off access to something that had been free since the beginning was worth any possible extra revenue they mightve gotten from people buying memberships to play the rest of the games. I think it wouldve been a good compromise to just gate the achievement system and any possible rewards from that behind the membership instead, or like you said create more levels.
"Hair on penguins looks weird" To be honest! I do agree in some sense to this! It might have been cool to have feather tufts as sort of substitute to the "realistic hair" problem. Edit: oh i remember when the minigame membership thing came out. I was like 9 or 10 years old and i was soooo angry.
I was shocked when you said 'hair', but I was even MORE shocked when you said you didn't want Herbert to be added in the first place, it's crazy to think what could've been. Could you make another video talking about the things you DID want to get into the game (but didn't)? It's always nice to see some content like that
@@ChrisHendricks Won't lie I still like the fluttery. The brown hair with pink bow. But I agree, the need to look cool distracted me from enjoying the mini games cause I used to stress everyday that my penguin did not look cool enough. If they had just stopped at a couple of the silly wigs and the fluttery it would have been fine, I think. The lashes Disney added also never looked right on the 3D penguin... they made it look like unibrows lol.
You're fantastic Chris, I can't thank you enough for everything you've done. How does it feel to have impacted hundreds of millions of people's lives in such a positive way?
1. I think Big Wigs Catalogue should have stayed separate, there was something about that. And now I'll be guessing who was the inspiration for which wig for ages now! I do think, especially when The Journey artstyle change happened, the wigs looked especially odd, but then so did the Penguin's faces and beaks. 2. Fair enough on your part, if you know the topic, I can see why it would be irritating. I do agree with Lane too though! (And I could talk for ages about what's possible in the CP World. The introduction of Scorn and Time Travel for example don't gel with me at ALL). 3. Any chance to talk about NOTLS, I am happy. Love those things. No serious real points to make here. 4. Yeah, although I can see where you're coming from, I think Herbert was a good addition. Although I do admit the whole original point of agents (Basically Mini-moderators) was lost as soon as the missions came in. 5. I mean, of course, you were right here. New games could have had levelgating, but the change to pre-existing ones wasn't something I liked as a kid.
ADDITIONAL ELABORATION: Go to 1:05 for an example comparing pre- and post-Journey Penguins. The first two that appear are post-Journey, which you can tell by their more rounded features and a slight gradient to the colours. The second two are pre-journey. That's an art style in which, in my opinion, hair works - a particular highlight of mine was the multicoloured wigs named after fruit for the Puffle Party.
@@gabrielsangalli9143 Honestly it turned me off as well. It seemed TOO detailed from the Club Penguin I was used to & really draws attention to how weird their beaks & feet are. I just kind of prefer the simplicity, "chunkiness", & "flatness" that was kind of common in the late 2000's Internet. I felt a similar thing happened to Neopets, but my era was late 2000's to early 2010's. So I'm used to a more in-between art style there.
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer journey style wasn't bad, still the original feels more unique imo Other thing i always found funny is the journey was detailed and then the character models and avatar images were still looking chubby
@@veto_5762 At one point (Pre-journey, I believe) the playercard image was going to change slightly, the penguin's facial expression being the main change. That never happened though!
Wow I didn't know you created Astro Barrier! My sister and I would play it for hours straight and I still remember one day we tabbed out of the game to change a song we were listening to and accidentally discovered the level 30 expert levels as a result. Was such a cool thing.
5 things I didn't want in Club Penguin (but got in anyways) 5. Frozen 4. Frozen 3. Frozen 2. Frozen And lastly.... 1. Pookies All jokes aside I just wanted to say thanks for being such a massive part of my childhood. Hearing you talk about Club Penguin as a "safe space" reminded me of the good old days, coming home after a tough day at school and just being able to relax in the Pizza Parlor. I would give anything to go back in time and do it all over again. I cant thank you and the rest of CP's phenomenal team enough for all of your hard work and dedication - as an OG Club Penguin vet from 08', hats off! I think a good follow up to this video would be "5 things you WANTED in Club Penguin, but never got green lit" - I think it would be interesting to see what might've been!
Happy 17th anniversary to this one-of-a-kind game! This game means so much to me and had a huge impact on my childhood. My siblings and I still bond over it, and I still collect random pieces of merchandise, regularly listen to the soundtrack, read about it, and play the remaining remakes. Awesome video as always and thanks for making our childhoods so great! :)
Honestly, I think that the "club penguin is safe!" angle made Herbert P. Bear seem more dangerous, like there was more to be threatened. He barely did anything for a long time, and he led to some really cool stuff like Operation Blackout
Regarding Herbert, I think having a villain was a good thing, it's one of the reasons I really liked the PSA/EPF missions. But I think he overstayed his welcome, and shouldn't have been the villain from the beginning to the end. It made it look like the penguins were incompetent, because they couldn't stop him. I would have much prefered if he became friendly and be a new kind of ally against a new type of villain. A great story could have come out of this I think, and it would have felt less repetitive compared to Herbert trying a new plan and failing for the xth time. The second DS game tried this, and even though I much prefer the first game (way less repetitive, why do we have to play the same missions that the ones we knew for years ?), the concept was there and was well executed in the last missions.
Interesting take on that! That hadn't occurred to me. I hear you, though we may have done it that way because we grew up on Saturday Morning Cartoon villains that worked just like that (Dr Claw, Gargamel, etc.)
I could honestly listen to you talking about all kinds of behind the scenes Club Penguin stuff all day... Was such a large part of my childhood. Thanks for the videos! 😊
As a girl who played club penguin I just want to say thank you for the hair. It does look silly and it does humanize the penguins but kids don’t necessarily want a fantasy away from the normal world as much as adults do. So as a girl that felt very accepted on an internet that at the time had been built for and by boys. Thanks for making that concession and giving us fun hair.
Absolutely there with you on the wigs honestly, but i will admit im an absolute sucker for the incredibly over the top ones like the clown wig and spikester
I remember the day Stamps came to Club Penguin so vividly, and the heartbreak that came with it. If I recall correctly, they announced the stamps (aka achievements) were coming soon to all minigames and we'd all get a stamp book for the update, which was exciting. Then the update came in the middle of the day and to my horror I had learned that basically all minigames were locked to free players (like me). Like Chris said, basically all minigames that were originally playable for everyone were locked out of 95% of the content unless you were a member. For most of them, only the first level was available as a sort of "free trial" in order to lure you into buying a membership. Which as a 10 year old kid, I couldn't. Even if I had the money, due to the ol' "Parents won't let you touch their credit card" stick. Also all those stamps required actually playing the minigames, so that too was essentially useless. For free players, the game was essentially yanked away from us in exchange for absolutely nothing in return. Needless to say, I quit playing shortly after and am still salty about it to this day.
LOVE these vids. I feel like the simplification that's necessary when designing a "game for kids" ends up shining a really clear spotlight on game design lessons that are universal. This one is especially interesting from a former player standpoint, because I feel like the internal friction on most of these points was actually noticeable in-game. Everything listed here except the eclipse followed one or more of a couple patterns: - a change that rolled out slowly, and seemed to be surrounded by some uncertainty regarding whether or not players would accept it - a change that came later in the game's development, and happened fairly suddenly - or a change that violated a previous design principle in some clear way. My personal takeaway here is that games (or other media) that run for any length of time under a single team develop a "voice"- which is kind of a given- but that maintaining that "voice" consistently, across conflicts in design philosophy, is really difficult. Running counter to it can be good, or bad, depending on the situation, but a decision like that is especially delicate, because its being detectable by players isn't something that you can avoid. What's interesting about that is that sometimes a shift in philosophy is necessary for a project creatively. I think the missions wanting an overarching villain, mostly to help along puzzle design, is a perfect example of that. Herbert works specifically because he operates within the sort of guiding philosophical constraints of the rest of the game, while stretching the idea of how much peril is acceptable within the game universe. Would really love to hear more about the challenges of writing him and keeping him both threatening and non-threatening- it's an interesting problem that you don't see very often. Most kids' media commits completely one way or the other, depending on the target audience. That push-pull of "sticking with what makes a game what it is" vs. "experimenting with new things that we think could be an improvement" is a really tricky thing. I really appreciate the emphasis here on listening to what your players want, as opposed to what you think is creatively correct, but also the discussion of setting hard boundaries for creative direction! The key here seems to be to let that tug-of-war happen in both directions, and not drown anybody's opinions out.
Very insightful! Thank you for the great comment! Unfortunately, I never wrote for Herbert, so I wouldn't be the one to answer that question. But I do know some of his writers, I'm curious what they would say.
With regard to #5, I think you were definitely right. If any game made for older players did this, the backlash would have been immense. I've seen a game try this, and the backlash on announcement was so huge that the publisher just deleted all references to paywalling anything and pretended the announcement never happened.
As someone who grew up on club penguin and adopted so many creative philosophies from its design, it’s surreal and incredible to have access to this channel as an adult. I’m so grateful for you being so transparent about your creative process. It’s so so so valuable. And of course, thank you for all the memories you made for me.
You can make a "5 ideas that i wished went into club penguin" talking about more concepts like the ones you talked about in earlier videos. Glad you're back into making videos, club penguin was a huge part of my childhood and i love knowing more about the behind the scenes
OH GOD YOURE SCREENHOG!! I remember stalking your website and entering penguin chat 3 in 2006-2007 when I was like 10 years old 😅 you really shaped my childhood bro
I was never one for adding hair to my penguin when I played, so I think I'm one of the only few on your side here! This is so far in hindsight, but it would have been cool to have had crests and feathers that kinda looked like hair but still felt penguin-y.
Personally, I think you not wanting villains in club penguin was a good thing, it meant that the eventual villain we did have was held to such a high standard that it really made something better than anything else that could've been added. All that is with the context that I have no idea what the behind the scenes were besides the context of this video, so perhaps the bar for Herbert would've always been this high - but I'd like to think that even in your dismissal of a villain, you helped create such an amazing one because of it.
I started this video on accident but his passionate hatred for hair on penguins and astronomical accuracy (in a world that previously had endless day) is very enticing
With the mention of a certain minigame at 14:51 all I can say is WOW! Astro Barrier is one of my favorite minigames in all of the island, so thank you! I'm so glad you had more levels in mind because I always thought it had more to offer, aside from it being one of the more forgotten minigames, especially with the fan-favorite Thin Ice sitting next to it in the same room... BUT, have you known that a Club Penguin-inspired project in 3D extended the minigame with their own original levels? I love your developer behind-the-scenes videos. 😄
@@ChrisHendricks The project is called CP3D, it's been around for a few years and it's basically a Club Penguin Game Day which is a lot closer to how the original game plays. They have every room and minigame in 3D, it's pretty sweet
Club Penguin was my favorite as a kid, I remember spending time drawing up ideas for costumes and other clothing items on printer paper and having my dad scan them at work so I could send them to the customer service email and getting so excited when one of "my ideas", a wearable puffle costume, got added to the game. Funnily enough I remember within my friend group there being a bit of elitism amongst those who had the "oldest" clothing items, the ones from the earliest days were some of our favorites - and we also hated the new hairstyles, we thought it was bizarre for penguins to have them too :-) Thanks for making this content, it brings back a lot of fond childhood memories!
I always genuinely considered the hair as wigs since they were clearly being displayed all over the gift shop- never ended up purchasing one though. Had nothing really against it, but not having hair just made me feel a part of the small civilization that had initially been depicted throughout the missions and the beginning years of Club Penguin. Loved the video, man, Happy 17th anniversary to Club Penguin, and thanks for uploading!
I'm really glad that Herbert P Bear was added, since without him Operation Blackout would never have happened. On a sidenote I do agree with your last point, I was a free to play player (excluding a 1 year time when I got a code to mebership in a magazine) but I remember the struggle of being a F2P especially after the big overhaul after 2013, everything "cool" seemed to be locked behind the membership, you could do only the retty basic stuff, and a child it felt really demoralizing
I got to enjoy Club Penguin through a child’s eyes and now as an adult to actually see the creative processes behind what came to be…amazing! I can’t express how much this game was a part of my childhood and the memories I have surrounding it. Thank you so much for making another video!!
I totally agree with you on wigs and voices And yeah, they started to get way too harsh with limiting things for non-members after a few years, that's about when I stopped playing
God, I wish you had the power to bring club penguin back. 2005-2009 were the best years, and I absolutely love the cute charm it used to have during those years. the island felt like a real community, you just can’t get that same vibe anywhere anymore. I hope someday it comes back
MAN, i feel you so hard with the hair point As a kid, having wigs were super important for that sense of immersion I had, I was more able to closely relate with my penguin the more i humanized, but, when i was revisiting the game as an adult I absolutely found myself leaning more and more towards those goofier aesthetics. Y'know I was playing for a sense of fantasy and escapism, which i guess in hindsight wigs ironically may've taken away from. i can totally see the addition of wigs also being a microcosm of club penguin's future aesthetics
5:53 bro's talking about club penguin having a solar eclipse for 5 days as being unrealistic meanwhile its been daylight for the past year, twice that of antarctica
i think it'd be nice to hear about more of your experiences with working on club penguin, even if it isn't another list like this (although a "5 things i wanted in club penguin but didnt get in" video would be nice to see). nice video :)
Man, I'm sorry. As someone who obsessed over club penguin when he was a kid, the question of "why's it suddenly night for halloween?" really never crossed my mind, but I can tell it was something you were really passionate about.
One of the best parts of CP were the missions. Always believed there were too few of them. Loved the fact that there was a villain. Thank you for making these videos.
some of my favorite memories from club penguin are the special agent missions, and i loved the mystery of figuring out who the culprit with the white fur was!! that aspect of the game wouldn’t have had the same charm without herbert’s addition
I am so glad you brought up hair! As someone who joined in early 2007 before wigs were really a thing, I can also remember how jarring it felt. As an occasional novelty item, i.e. something like the Clown wig, I dig it! As a big widespread feature that eventually became the default appearance for penguins in practically every official render from 2009-onwards? Not a fan. The simplicity of the early penguin designs was so appealing, and the hair seemed to counter that philosophy! I totally understand and respect your thought process regarding human voices, too, and Night of the Living Sled was a very charming extension of that rule. However, the pop songs that did eventually become implemented on Club Penguin and its UA-cam channel were fantastic. I still crank "Ghost Just Wanna Dance" every Halloween. So, I'm ok with how that one turned out! As for Herbert... yeah, I'm glad other team members overrode your decision that one 😂 Herbert is iconic, Club Penguin just wouldn't be the same without him! Everyone loves a good villain, and the nuance of Herbert being a vegetarian who just doesn't care for the cold or loud music helped ensure the danger was never all too looming. I will say though, the gradual buildup to Herbert's reveal with the white hair in the missions was really cool. I remember being so invested and excited thinking about all the possibilities when it was teased. That was a really creative idea! As a very dedicated Club Penguin player/UA-camr, it's really cool seeing these more candid discussions about the behind-the-scenes of what made the game click. Thanks for the video, keep up the great work!
Honestly you're super right about the clashing of hats and hair. My wig in-game became a mainstay and because of that it was hard to subtly move away from my "signature look" by adding a hat without kind of ruining it.
Man I miss Club Penguin so much, I played from around 2007-2011 or so and went back every now and then during the remaining years. I wish it was still around now even as a 25 year old I know I'd still have a blast with it. Thanks for everything Chris, you and the team made some of my best childhood memories
Making the first hair option be a clown wig is so beautiful Also making the Villain an animal that also lives in a cold place, but doesnt actually exist around Penguins (and therefore doesnt have a real life connection to killing and eating them) was a really nice yet probably not done on purpose move. Having the villain be an animal that literally kills penguins in real life would have just not been the vibe, yknow?
I love how he was so focused on the science of things for a game of ninja penguins who are also secret agents and talk while waddling and making fart noises
dude night time on club penguin was THE BEST part of the game in my opinion. genuinely my favorite part of the entire game. The eclipse science thing would've bothered me too ngl haha
It would be great to take a twist on this video and note some things that you wanted in the game, but didn’t make it for one reason or another. Thank you for making all these behind-the-scenes videos Chris!
Glad you are back! Club penguin was very important in my childhood and I really love everything about the early artwork, awesome work! Love from Brazil 🇧🇷😘
I love your videos, these have a huge insight into the tiniest of details for things I grew up wondering, I remember voting for wigs to stay... I'm now so sorry Chris
I definitely don't think you were wrong about that last one. Even as a kid, I knew how unfair it was to take parts of the game away from free players and demand that they pay to access them again. I think there would've been enough incentive for membership without locking away parts of the minigames, perhaps even more so if _new_ content was added for members.
Great Video, and thank you for a great childhood! Can you do a video talking about the puffles, Why they were made? How you guys felt about Puffles and just basically a video fully about Puffles?
Herbert and Klutzy were my favorite characters of the whole game, can hardly imagine Club Penguin without them. They also paved the way to future additions like the Protobot and Tusk (very underrated by the way) And you might have a point about the penguins becoming more "humanized". As the years went by you could see them become more slender and fashion-oriented...but I suppose it was inevitable.
It’s so cool to hear the backstory for Herbert P. Bear being added to the game - I loved the missions as a kid, so learning something new after all this time feels really dear to my heart. Thank you ^-^
Whilst I, a science fanatic as yourself, agree how little a solar eclipse lasts. I'd think that's not the most unrealistic thing to point out when you are working on a game with talking penguins who can build a town on an iceberg, ride in minecarts for fun, and work in a secret agency and ninja dojo as side jobs.
i played CP pretty religiously from 2006/2007 - 2009/2010, so i actually remember a lot of these being added. i remember wigs being added and having some mixed feelings about it, i remember the excitement of the mystery of the white fur, and i always liked the lack of human voices. but it was the increased member gating that pretty much got me to stop playing. not entirely, because i'd found other things that completely ate up the family internet (bandwidth truly was such a problem), but even as someone who had previously been a member i remember logging on and being upset. there was so little to do day to day, and even less to do during some of the parties, which had always been my favourite part. anyway, really enjoyed this video, always enjoy these kind of insights.
Just discovered your channel and all I have to say for now is: thank you so much. I used to be bullied in my childhood, had no friends and my parentes used to work all day, leaving me only with the computer. Club Penguin was my safe and happy place. Thank you, really, thank you so much. I miss club penguin.
I always thought Iceberg was a lot cooler of a room without the Aqua Grabber mini game there. Like how it was at the beginning before it was added, the room had a cooler vibe imo
I still remember when i was a kid and played misson 5 with the Herbert shadow figure with klutzy, it absolutely terrified me especially with the music it was paired with and because of that i didnt play PSA missons for a couple of years 😅
Return of the king. Club Penguin was my entire childhood, even above Minecraft. Videos like this invoke the perfect amount of nostalgia while inviting new information for my now adult brain. Love behind the scenes stuff!
I think one of the things I didn't like about Club penguin was that you could buy all of these items when you had a membership, but once that membership ended, you couldn't wear the items anymore. It would have been nice if everything you bought during membership was still accessible to you, because I feel as if you still earned those items even after the membership was done. I guess from a business standpoint it makes sense, but also I feel like I would have still craved the need to get a membership because of the want of new items coming out. It is one of the reasons that I stopped playing around 2010-2011 time because I made the shift to roblox, in which it had a system where you could get a lot of items through the in game currency without membership, and with the membership it was easier to get items and you were able to keep said items after the builders club expired.
I love how he says “if you worked with me in the early days of club penguin” like it’s a thing most people have done.
No it's because it's a common phrase in the English language
@@tonypatino1765 wasn't there like 6 people working on club penguin in the early days?
@@tonypatino1765 ikr people say "if you worked with me in the early days of club penguin" all the damn time what is this guy on about
@DucksAndCatnip Atleast you have enough intelligence to find the like button on your own reply, but not enough to find what part of the sentence is a common saying
@@tonypatino1765 LMAO stay mad lil bro
I think the fact club penguin was so “safe” and “fun” is what made Herbert’s entrance that much more exciting. The first indicator that there was a malevolent presence in the land was unnerving, but kept things interesting!
Not to mention they actually had Herbert do a terrorist attack on the EPF HQ.
then it eventually led to operation blackout where the most amount of evil the island had seen occurred and it was genuinely one of the most memorable moments
@@hec7581operation blackout is one of the greatest missions in gaming history
physcho
Herbert scared ten year old me :(
Chris' opinions on:
Club Penguin daytime lasting 24/7/365: yeah, that's fine
Club Penguin total solar eclipses lasting 5 days: yeah, that astronomically makes no sense
Now you get it! It's so logical!
To be fair, doesn't the sun stay up for 6 or so months in the poles? It's not 365 days, but hey, close!
@@GumSkyloard Imagine a realistic simulation of the day and night of the south pole in Club Penguin, the summer solstice party instead of Christmas or a parody of Midwinter Day in June.
ummm ackchyually it would be 365.2422 days in a year due to leap years
I mean, yeah, it's also astronomically possible to have 24/7/365 daylight - Club Penguin might just be set on a tidally locked planet, like how the moon's mostly tidally locked to us on Earth
When i saw astro barrier… i really begged the fucking world to give me back my club penguin. We will never get to experience this again. The diving. The ice fishing. The coffee bean bags being thrown in your face. ASTRO BARRIER. Even mancala was cool. I will forever cherish this game and even if its all solo, i want it back. Every bit of it, in working order as it was intended. I really want club penguin :(
I mean, it's still fully playable again thanks to fans, but I understand if you wouldn't want to play an unofficial version of the game
The “Was I Wrong” segments made this video really great and helped stop it from being too negative. It was really interesting hearing what kind of compromises were made when implementing these features.
That's why they were there! I have no interest in making a video that's nothing about complaints. A video with a clickbait-y title like this only makes sense to me if there's self-reflection.
Some writers have too strong opinions about their works without even considering others' opinions. I'm glad Chris isn't one of them
yup
I can't belive this guy worked on the game that i grew up whit
@@ChrisHendricks I loved your self-reflection, good job
13:00 The sudden paywalling of every minigame with the release of stamps still to this day has left a very bitter memory in me. It was the main reason why I stopped playing Club Penguin around that time when I was like 11 or so, I couldn't play pretty much anything I used to love anymore.
It's also the one thing that I can't ever not think of, whenever talking about our memories of Club Penguin with friends.
this type of stuff can kill a game player base and/or halt new players from joining. worst decision ever.
Selling out is always the downfall of all games. Especially the Disney era
When your player base is mainly young children, putting a paywall in suddenly isn't going to get you more money because the parents of those children aren't suddenly going to buy a monthly subscription to a game just for more minigames levels, if they wouldnt have for clothes, furniture, or extra puffle colours.
i came here to say just that. while i was never too empty-handed when it came to memberships, at around the time the paywalls were added was when i rarely ever got a membership, if at all, and it was honestly not the same game anymore. took a lot of fun out of the game. i'm so glad private servers exist, but i still get anxious seeing that little membership icon in certain games tbh.
i loved stamps lol but not the paywall
So glad herbert exists, without him psa missions wouldn't be as cool as they are
Agreed! And Klutzy made him so much cooler.
Loved those. They were so cool. I used to replay them a ton. I got sad when they went away, then one day I logged in and they were back.
@@ChrisHendricks I actually named my puffle "Klutzy" after him.
@@ChrisHendricks I’ve always wanted a klutzy plushy so bad 😢 I still want one
@@enimo9241 yess klutzy is underrated
Chris, I'm shocked your issue with the eclipse was the length of the thing and not the fact that the sun is being eclipsed by a supposed moon. A moon which, to this point, had never shown itself since there's no night time. So Club Penguin's world has a moon which shows itself once a year for five days then shoots off to God knows where for the remaining 360 days.
ill be honest, i didnt even know the darkness of the island during halloween was caused by a solar eclipse lol. i just absolutely loved the atmosphere of halloween and never really thought about why its suddenly dark outside
As a kid I just assumed it was the weather, I think that 'this looks cool' was more important than consistent lore. If it was an educational game I could see it being more important not to mislead kids about eclipses but Club Penguin really wasn't.
Agreed
me neither lol
Same I mightve seen it once or twice in the paper 😭 but I thought it was just the design
eventually it was changed from eclipses to just dark clouds covering the entire sky!
As a dude in his 20s, I miss Club Penguin a lot.
Same man, simpler times
Same
I'm someone that's literally a child, I miss it too (I played one of those copies after club penguin shut down then the website was ceised by the Police) 💀
@@Cumbag I think that if Club Penguin was to magically come back, the people to play it would only be the generation that grew up with it, basically people in their 20s, for nostalgia. It would be a game to chill and relax, meet and talk to new people, hang out in-game, etc haha
Same
I definitely agree with the last point!
Locking more things behind memberships seemed to lead to the eventual downfall, at least in my experience. I remember circa 2014 when the clothing catalog got to a point where basically all you could only buy without a membership was a green cap and an orange shirt with a star.
I'm definitely no financial advisor but this definitely felt like a step in the wrong direction.
I was gone when most of it happened, but looking from afar, there was certainly a sense of greed in Club Penguin's later years, unfortunately.
It was definitely membership exclusivity for sure. Being that I essentially grew up along side Club Penguin, I hit 18 when the original Club Penguin was taken offline in favor of Club Penguin Island. Growing up parallel to the game, I felt as though the older both it and I got the worse it felt, directly felt like growing up. Obviously in my teen years I stopped playing it as I grew apart from it but the feeling of playing it every once in a while always came around. Y'know... Nostalgia and all that. Like Chris Hendricks said himself; I understood the idea of monetizing what is essentially and otherwise free game, I understood locking content behind paywalls to get people to pay, but the greed of the membership system is what took it down imho. When the only thing you can essentially do without a membership is wear like 2 outfits, yeah, it feels a bit rough on ya. I don't remember the specifics but if I remember correctly you also were limited to the bare minimum in other aspects too. Regular Igloo, certain games were limited, Red and Blue Puffles only(you kept the ones you bought while on the membership but couldn't buy the others without). It definitely made the game feel devoid of fun when the only way to was to pay.
They actually added more to the catalog for non-members, and more in 2015, it began with non-members being able to buy nothing?
@@legowar177 I mean it began like that and sorta ended with that. They did add more clothes but by the time it happened it was too late and was in rotation iirc.
@@ChrisHendricks Absolutely! Club Penguin Island was that , but dialed up to the max , it was crazy.
It’s interesting you mentioned not wanting to humanize penguins, because I feel like the post-Disney Club Penguin did the opposite of that, trying its best to make the penguins as close to humans as possible
The models for club Penguin island were a bit strange too. Specialy Rockhopper, god that thing was a shadow of its former self
This was definitely noticeable 2013 and onward
In Club penguin island it was weird that all the characters had different body shapes, it was probably just to make it easier to differentiate them from normal penguins but still looks strange, Jet Pack Guy and Rockhopper being big and buff, Dot being skinny and curvy, Gary and Rookie being skinny as well etc.
At least their voices matched perfectly with the characters imo
I think the more they started humanizing the penguins (with a more focus on hairs and pop songs and stuff) the more corporative the whole thing starting to feel honestly. It especially was more noticeable after Disney bought Club Penguin.
I spent most of my childhood playing through the Disney era of Club Penguin, but recently after taking a look at fragments of what it used to be, I really wish I was there to witness it; classic Club Penguin looks and feels so charming.
I feel like the introduction of animal-based puffles really added to the unsettling humanization
Same with the high school and to a lesser extent the skatepark
I played mostly pre-Disney and I definitely felt like there was a lack of restraint when it came to adding humanized elements to Club Penguin after they were bought. Though I think in a way it was inevitable that they'd eventually have to sacrifice a little artistic integrity for the sake of keeping the player base happy with new content, especially those paying with memberships to keep the server afloat.
It lost the cartoon cuteness of Chris’ art style and just got… gross
Me who joined 3 months before it shut down: 👁👄👁
yes! i was also a post-disney acquisition kid and i loved the game so much i never really thought too hard about how things used to be. when i signed up for CPR before club penguin shut down and loved the old style equally, and honestly found that i missed things from both ends of the spectrum. i wanted some old clothing items but liked the newer ones too etc. at the end of the day it was clear to me (despite the cash grabs that came later) there were a lot of passionate people working on it throughout *everything* , trying to create new and fun things all the time which meant a lot :)
..but i was also a spoiled kid who got membership from the day i created my account lol
Now I wonder about the reverse, actually - what are things you *really* wanted in Club Penguin that never made it?
oh hi oneshot pfp
Oh hello other Kip
not sure if you've watched the latest video already, but he's finally answered your prayers.
@@pj1343 oho, i've seen!
Club penguin meant so much to us, i still miss it even as a grown man, its amazing how a simple chat room became such a pure and fun childhood memory for so many people. As someone who isn’t american or christian i remember how as a kid i got to know other holidays like halloween and Christmas, for the first time, through club penguin events and ive been waiting for them to come even though i wasn’t celebrating these holidays in real life. Damn i miss these times.
Same, whenever I think of Halloween and Christmas I think of Club Penguin's parties. Once again now that Halloween is coming up.
You can play on the biggest CPPS (Club Penguin Private Server) out at the moment called NewCP. It's a full remake and fully active fan made rebuild of the game and they host tons of parties and everything. Almost 2mil players have registered so far.
@@SarahTheWitch7119 After playing CPR for 5 or so years and that getting shut down. I'm far too scared to get attached to another Club Penguin game :(
@@gabbydoodle1 This one won’t get shut down. The reason CPO & CPR were shut down was because they were braking laws and regulations Disney require to keep up servers running. CPR broke copyright law and were stealing money for personal gain for their ad revenue and CPO had no moderate or family friendly requirements. Both went against Disney’s policies and several laws so Disney shut them down. NewCP breaks zero laws or regulations and is the only one to likely be standing in the very end since they oblige by all requirements to run the game legally.
@@SarahTheWitch7119 They should really really really rename that server
Early CP had such a great style. I feel like sometimes people don’t realize sometimes it’s not always what you do that makes something great, it’s also what you DONT do.
Maybe we shouldn't use that abbreviation for club penguin😅
@@rosestar1324 We can't let them win. don't give any ground to them. they deserve less than nothing.
@@rosestar1324Maybe they shouldn’t use it
there was a private server called CPonline and the mods of it got exposed as pedos.... what a fitting name
@@rosestar1324I'm not kidding I was so confused when I started seeing people use that abbreviation in such horrible contexts. Had no idea why they would make Club Penguin illegal.
Awesome to finally get another Club Penguin video after years. Thanks for uploading more!!
You made it! Awesome. And you're welcome!
@@ChrisHendricks Yeah, thanks man!
@vailskibum hey
I keep seeing you everywhere!!
I keep forgetting you were eaglefan246 and idk if you cringe at the fact or embrace it but thank you for making a part of my childhood!
Honestly now that you mention it the thing about the penguins having hair makes a lot of sense but I can't imagine not having the sidetied and flutterby variations in the game, they're so iconic😭😭
The strikers and the tuft too
I love the flutterby 🥺
I feel like a lot of what you said is what led to the eventual downfall of Club Penguin. When so much was locked behind a paywall, it discouraged a lot of the fun and the vibe of everything became almost gatekeepy. It seemed less like a little extra incentive and more of a "What can we do to get every last penny out of players?" ...which I also felt during the Disney-sponsored parties. It didn't feel like they were being made for the spirit and the party and fun of the players, but another facet of marketing for Disney.
To me this goes hand in hand with something you hinted at with the wigs section as well; the more humanized Club Penguin became, the less of that escape it felt. The addition of a mall, dog and cat puffles, and penguins becoming more and more like people really made it feel like the charm was being sapped out of the game, and what led me to stop playing. I'll always have fond memories of the earlier years though (:
Well said.
There was also the increased addition of members only rooms during parties
@@Karmy. and when the mascots got online they used to spend most of their time in these rooms...
Agreed, I eventually quit Club Penguin as a child because my parents wouldn’t support the membership fees. And at that point if you weren’t a member there was basically nothing to do besides replaying the same first levels of mini games over and over again.
Badly said.
I LOVED THIS so much fun!
The thing on "no human voice" helped people like me from Brazil understand more the game without english people talking so much (also I learned a lot of english because I needed to read it a lot and search the words to understand!)
I am now a creative person and love to see how our decisions may or not be great at the time and why we should talk to everyone and see other ideas, good to see how you learned from all those perspectives :D
Man, I feel ya with the "humanizing penguins too much" point. I love when media has conventionally unpopular animals and makes them sympathetic but all too often they fall into the trap of making them WAY too human-like. I mean, look at the bees from the Bee Movie. they don't feel like bees, they feel like creepy little imps. They have TEETH! And those human eyes!
I love the Halloween info too, the implications of how eclipses work in Club Penguin's world are charmingly weird. Halloween's all about being weird!
Bee Movie is an abomination. Weirdest courtroom scene ever.
You know what? I'll give them credit where its due by keeping the proportions the same for male and female penguins the same and not doing the crap in media where they obviously make the female anthro characters much more humanized and with curves.
@@BladeTheGabite Your penguin on Club Penguin was already neutral by default, no?
@@AwesomeYena Genderfluid penguins
I agree with your criticism of teeth in the bee movie, but human eyes are infinitely more expressive than bee eyes are - from an animation standpoint it makes a lot of sense to make that change, because it makes it much easier to convey emotion in a way almost any viewer can understand, I don’t think the movie would’ve been as successful as it was without that change. But the teeth are entirely unnecessary and creepy.
Secret of the Fur was my favourite mission! I loved the mystery of it and the "whoa...a POLAR BEAR?"
same!!!! i remember being so excited for that whole saga
I still remember Club Penguin Rewritten introducing Herbert as a mascot who visited on Halloween along with Klutzy. It was cool and all, but the room was full of people begging for him to step on them
_Aw_ GROSS!
Thanks for reminding me why people scare me..
oh dear I was there too
🤨 people are down bad huh?
I had my whole room switch to crab costumes, he called us stinky. I miss it . VIA LA CRAB GANG
"a solar eclipse for 5 days!? that would be astronomically impossible!"
*3 minutes ago* "we don't have a day/night cycle there's no night all year round"
Funny how almost all your gripes with these features were countered with "Yeah, but silly cartoon game logic."
LOL you're not wrong.
i agree with the hair, i think it would’ve been cooler if instead of getting actual hair you styled the feathers on top of the penguin head that replicated actual hair styles, and that would match with the penguin color of course, could even get it dyed too
I love how (possibly unintentionally) when he mentions his childhood obsession with Astronomy preventing him wanting the solar eclipse to go ahead, Lurking in the Dark kicks in, music making him out to be a villain!
This was mostly intentional, yes.
@@ChrisHendricks Brilliant! Out of interest did you get the chance to compose much of the music for the Halloween parties? Have very fond memories of the music from them.
I embrace penguin hair almost solely for the scene penguin at 1:12, that image just took me right back to my childhood
As for the night time issue, I think it would've been cool if the island stayed dark from Halloween thru New Years (Halloween spookiness, Christmas lights, and fireworks are all best at night), and then explained away as a fact of the polar solar cycle where half the year is day and the other half is night👀
I agree as well. Honestly, I loved it when Club Penguin was night and would been happy if lasted half the year. Tho, I was a nerdy kid who likely would have preferred if the Polar Night lasted from March to August.
Wooww great idea
The wigs worked for me because it felt like putting barbie clothes on a dumpy stuffed animal. The penguins ALREADY looked silly-putting super elaborate, pretty outfits on them was already goofy looking! So why not have fun with it and use the hair and clothes as wish fulfillment 😂
As a somewhat older Club Penguin player (2007), I experienced some passionate emotions when I revisited Club Penguin to discover pop songs with vocals. Up to this point, due to the PSA missions and the weekly comics they would post on the site, I had always seen penguins as moving, voiceless comic characters. It was jarring, and almost "too Disney" to suddenly hear these voices in the game. I never really came to like them, but they were well made, and the newer generation of club penguin players seemed to really enjoy them, so that's good at least.
I will never like the addition of teeth though. *shudders*
P.S. It was a delight to discover your channel. Club Penguin inspired significant growth in me as an artist when I was only 8-11 years old and still have very fond memories of playing the game, enjoying the music, and drawing my own comics. Learning bits about Club Penguin's creative process in my adulthood is some of the most fascinating and satisfying things I've had the pleasure of experiencing. Thank you always for sharing, Chris. Love and respect from one artist to another
You're welcome! And I can totally relate. There were many times when I'd read a character from a comic strip, but then when I'd see an animated version, the voice didn't match what was in my head. (Archie was bad for this.)
You made Astro Barrier?? That one was my favorite and was very influential for me! It was the first time I noticed the game development concept of introducing a mechanic in a somewhat simple space and then expanding on it while mixing it with other previous mechanics to increase variety and difficulty. Even to this day as I'm trying to break into the independent game development sphere, Ive made multiple astro barrier clones as a way to learn new development environments like Game Maker, Godot, Gameboy Homebrew, Pico-8, etc.
Oh also in my opinion you were right about the pay wall thing. I don't think cutting off access to something that had been free since the beginning was worth any possible extra revenue they mightve gotten from people buying memberships to play the rest of the games. I think it wouldve been a good compromise to just gate the achievement system and any possible rewards from that behind the membership instead, or like you said create more levels.
That's awesome! I've been wanting to learn Godot myself, maybe I should try remaking some of Astro-Barrier in Godot.
I had the astro barrier pin and was very proud of it since it was my oldest pin, so one that most people at the time (2008) didnt have.
When a content creator whose work you genuinely enjoy comes back after a long time, it really is the best feeling. Welcome back Chris!
Much appreciated!
I agree. The moment I see his videos in my recommended I have to click on it
Yes thank you! Would love to see more videos
"Hair on penguins looks weird"
To be honest! I do agree in some sense to this! It might have been cool to have feather tufts as sort of substitute to the "realistic hair" problem.
Edit: oh i remember when the minigame membership thing came out. I was like 9 or 10 years old and i was soooo angry.
would love feather-y hairdos tho!
I was shocked when you said 'hair', but I was even MORE shocked when you said you didn't want Herbert to be added in the first place, it's crazy to think what could've been.
Could you make another video talking about the things you DID want to get into the game (but didn't)? It's always nice to see some content like that
Yess that would be nice!
As a girl who started playing when I was very young, I had a membership and it was SO IMPORTANT to have hair for popularity when playing the game
The desire to achieve a certain look was not something I appreciated at the time at all.
@@ChrisHendricks Won't lie I still like the fluttery. The brown hair with pink bow. But I agree, the need to look cool distracted me from enjoying the mini games cause I used to stress everyday that my penguin did not look cool enough. If they had just stopped at a couple of the silly wigs and the fluttery it would have been fine, I think. The lashes Disney added also never looked right on the 3D penguin... they made it look like unibrows lol.
>goes on rant about how eclipses should’ve been astronomically correct
>I didn’t want club penguin to be too close to our reality in the next point.
LOL!!!!! Don't even get me started on the whole "why were you upset about 5 days of eclipse, but not the previous 365 days of daylight?"
You're fantastic Chris, I can't thank you enough for everything you've done. How does it feel to have impacted hundreds of millions of people's lives in such a positive way?
Weeeeeeiiiiiird
1. I think Big Wigs Catalogue should have stayed separate, there was something about that. And now I'll be guessing who was the inspiration for which wig for ages now! I do think, especially when The Journey artstyle change happened, the wigs looked especially odd, but then so did the Penguin's faces and beaks.
2. Fair enough on your part, if you know the topic, I can see why it would be irritating. I do agree with Lane too though! (And I could talk for ages about what's possible in the CP World. The introduction of Scorn and Time Travel for example don't gel with me at ALL).
3. Any chance to talk about NOTLS, I am happy. Love those things. No serious real points to make here.
4. Yeah, although I can see where you're coming from, I think Herbert was a good addition. Although I do admit the whole original point of agents (Basically Mini-moderators) was lost as soon as the missions came in.
5. I mean, of course, you were right here. New games could have had levelgating, but the change to pre-existing ones wasn't something I liked as a kid.
ADDITIONAL ELABORATION: Go to 1:05 for an example comparing pre- and post-Journey Penguins. The first two that appear are post-Journey, which you can tell by their more rounded features and a slight gradient to the colours. The second two are pre-journey. That's an art style in which, in my opinion, hair works - a particular highlight of mine was the multicoloured wigs named after fruit for the Puffle Party.
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer i hate the Journey artstyle so much
@@gabrielsangalli9143 Honestly it turned me off as well. It seemed TOO detailed from the Club Penguin I was used to & really draws attention to how weird their beaks & feet are. I just kind of prefer the simplicity, "chunkiness", & "flatness" that was kind of common in the late 2000's Internet.
I felt a similar thing happened to Neopets, but my era was late 2000's to early 2010's. So I'm used to a more in-between art style there.
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer journey style wasn't bad, still the original feels more unique imo
Other thing i always found funny is the journey was detailed and then the character models and avatar images were still looking chubby
@@veto_5762 At one point (Pre-journey, I believe) the playercard image was going to change slightly, the penguin's facial expression being the main change. That never happened though!
Wow I didn't know you created Astro Barrier! My sister and I would play it for hours straight and I still remember one day we tabbed out of the game to change a song we were listening to and accidentally discovered the level 30 expert levels as a result. Was such a cool thing.
The Legend of our childhood is back
5 things I didn't want in Club Penguin (but got in anyways)
5. Frozen
4. Frozen
3. Frozen
2. Frozen
And lastly....
1. Pookies
All jokes aside I just wanted to say thanks for being such a massive part of my childhood. Hearing you talk about Club Penguin as a "safe space" reminded me of the good old days, coming home after a tough day at school and just being able to relax in the Pizza Parlor. I would give anything to go back in time and do it all over again. I cant thank you and the rest of CP's phenomenal team enough for all of your hard work and dedication - as an OG Club Penguin vet from 08', hats off!
I think a good follow up to this video would be "5 things you WANTED in Club Penguin, but never got green lit" - I think it would be interesting to see what might've been!
Happy 17th anniversary to this one-of-a-kind game! This game means so much to me and had a huge impact on my childhood. My siblings and I still bond over it, and I still collect random pieces of merchandise, regularly listen to the soundtrack, read about it, and play the remaining remakes. Awesome video as always and thanks for making our childhoods so great! :)
Honestly, I think that the "club penguin is safe!" angle made Herbert P. Bear seem more dangerous, like there was more to be threatened. He barely did anything for a long time, and he led to some really cool stuff like Operation Blackout
Regarding Herbert, I think having a villain was a good thing, it's one of the reasons I really liked the PSA/EPF missions. But I think he overstayed his welcome, and shouldn't have been the villain from the beginning to the end. It made it look like the penguins were incompetent, because they couldn't stop him. I would have much prefered if he became friendly and be a new kind of ally against a new type of villain. A great story could have come out of this I think, and it would have felt less repetitive compared to Herbert trying a new plan and failing for the xth time. The second DS game tried this, and even though I much prefer the first game (way less repetitive, why do we have to play the same missions that the ones we knew for years ?), the concept was there and was well executed in the last missions.
Interesting take on that! That hadn't occurred to me. I hear you, though we may have done it that way because we grew up on Saturday Morning Cartoon villains that worked just like that (Dr Claw, Gargamel, etc.)
@@ChrisHendricks Herbert was my generation's Baron Silas Greenback. I will say no more. They even both had voiceless pets!
I could honestly listen to you talking about all kinds of behind the scenes Club Penguin stuff all day... Was such a large part of my childhood. Thanks for the videos! 😊
As a girl who played club penguin I just want to say thank you for the hair. It does look silly and it does humanize the penguins but kids don’t necessarily want a fantasy away from the normal world as much as adults do. So as a girl that felt very accepted on an internet that at the time had been built for and by boys.
Thanks for making that concession and giving us fun hair.
Absolutely there with you on the wigs honestly, but i will admit im an absolute sucker for the incredibly over the top ones like the clown wig and spikester
I remember the day Stamps came to Club Penguin so vividly, and the heartbreak that came with it. If I recall correctly, they announced the stamps (aka achievements) were coming soon to all minigames and we'd all get a stamp book for the update, which was exciting. Then the update came in the middle of the day and to my horror I had learned that basically all minigames were locked to free players (like me). Like Chris said, basically all minigames that were originally playable for everyone were locked out of 95% of the content unless you were a member. For most of them, only the first level was available as a sort of "free trial" in order to lure you into buying a membership. Which as a 10 year old kid, I couldn't. Even if I had the money, due to the ol' "Parents won't let you touch their credit card" stick. Also all those stamps required actually playing the minigames, so that too was essentially useless.
For free players, the game was essentially yanked away from us in exchange for absolutely nothing in return. Needless to say, I quit playing shortly after and am still salty about it to this day.
LOVE these vids. I feel like the simplification that's necessary when designing a "game for kids" ends up shining a really clear spotlight on game design lessons that are universal.
This one is especially interesting from a former player standpoint, because I feel like the internal friction on most of these points was actually noticeable in-game. Everything listed here except the eclipse followed one or more of a couple patterns:
- a change that rolled out slowly, and seemed to be surrounded by some uncertainty regarding whether or not players would accept it
- a change that came later in the game's development, and happened fairly suddenly
- or a change that violated a previous design principle in some clear way.
My personal takeaway here is that games (or other media) that run for any length of time under a single team develop a "voice"- which is kind of a given- but that maintaining that "voice" consistently, across conflicts in design philosophy, is really difficult. Running counter to it can be good, or bad, depending on the situation, but a decision like that is especially delicate, because its being detectable by players isn't something that you can avoid.
What's interesting about that is that sometimes a shift in philosophy is necessary for a project creatively. I think the missions wanting an overarching villain, mostly to help along puzzle design, is a perfect example of that. Herbert works specifically because he operates within the sort of guiding philosophical constraints of the rest of the game, while stretching the idea of how much peril is acceptable within the game universe. Would really love to hear more about the challenges of writing him and keeping him both threatening and non-threatening- it's an interesting problem that you don't see very often. Most kids' media commits completely one way or the other, depending on the target audience.
That push-pull of "sticking with what makes a game what it is" vs. "experimenting with new things that we think could be an improvement" is a really tricky thing. I really appreciate the emphasis here on listening to what your players want, as opposed to what you think is creatively correct, but also the discussion of setting hard boundaries for creative direction! The key here seems to be to let that tug-of-war happen in both directions, and not drown anybody's opinions out.
Very insightful! Thank you for the great comment!
Unfortunately, I never wrote for Herbert, so I wouldn't be the one to answer that question. But I do know some of his writers, I'm curious what they would say.
With regard to #5, I think you were definitely right. If any game made for older players did this, the backlash would have been immense. I've seen a game try this, and the backlash on announcement was so huge that the publisher just deleted all references to paywalling anything and pretended the announcement never happened.
As someone who grew up on club penguin and adopted so many creative philosophies from its design, it’s surreal and incredible to have access to this channel as an adult. I’m so grateful for you being so transparent about your creative process. It’s so so so valuable.
And of course, thank you for all the memories you made for me.
You can make a "5 ideas that i wished went into club penguin" talking about more concepts like the ones you talked about in earlier videos. Glad you're back into making videos, club penguin was a huge part of my childhood and i love knowing more about the behind the scenes
i like to imagine "ive been delayed" was just found on some old answering machine washed up on a beach on club penguin island
OH GOD YOURE SCREENHOG!! I remember stalking your website and entering penguin chat 3 in 2006-2007 when I was like 10 years old 😅 you really shaped my childhood bro
I was never one for adding hair to my penguin when I played, so I think I'm one of the only few on your side here! This is so far in hindsight, but it would have been cool to have had crests and feathers that kinda looked like hair but still felt penguin-y.
I agree with you on the last argument, locking everything behind a membership paywall was very infuriating and a step in the wrong direction.
Personally, I think you not wanting villains in club penguin was a good thing, it meant that the eventual villain we did have was held to such a high standard that it really made something better than anything else that could've been added.
All that is with the context that I have no idea what the behind the scenes were besides the context of this video, so perhaps the bar for Herbert would've always been this high - but I'd like to think that even in your dismissal of a villain, you helped create such an amazing one because of it.
I started this video on accident but his passionate hatred for hair on penguins and astronomical accuracy (in a world that previously had endless day) is very enticing
With the mention of a certain minigame at 14:51 all I can say is WOW! Astro Barrier is one of my favorite minigames in all of the island, so thank you! I'm so glad you had more levels in mind because I always thought it had more to offer, aside from it being one of the more forgotten minigames, especially with the fan-favorite Thin Ice sitting next to it in the same room... BUT, have you known that a Club Penguin-inspired project in 3D extended the minigame with their own original levels?
I love your developer behind-the-scenes videos. 😄
I wasn't aware that there were more fan-made levels! I'd love to see them.
@@ChrisHendricks The project is called CP3D, it's been around for a few years and it's basically a Club Penguin Game Day which is a lot closer to how the original game plays. They have every room and minigame in 3D, it's pretty sweet
Club Penguin was my favorite as a kid, I remember spending time drawing up ideas for costumes and other clothing items on printer paper and having my dad scan them at work so I could send them to the customer service email and getting so excited when one of "my ideas", a wearable puffle costume, got added to the game. Funnily enough I remember within my friend group there being a bit of elitism amongst those who had the "oldest" clothing items, the ones from the earliest days were some of our favorites - and we also hated the new hairstyles, we thought it was bizarre for penguins to have them too :-) Thanks for making this content, it brings back a lot of fond childhood memories!
I always genuinely considered the hair as wigs since they were clearly being displayed all over the gift shop- never ended up purchasing one though.
Had nothing really against it, but not having hair just made me feel a part of the small civilization that had initially been depicted throughout the missions and the beginning years of Club Penguin.
Loved the video, man, Happy 17th anniversary to Club Penguin, and thanks for uploading!
I'm really glad that Herbert P Bear was added, since without him Operation Blackout would never have happened. On a sidenote I do agree with your last point, I was a free to play player (excluding a 1 year time when I got a code to mebership in a magazine) but I remember the struggle of being a F2P especially after the big overhaul after 2013, everything "cool" seemed to be locked behind the membership, you could do only the retty basic stuff, and a child it felt really demoralizing
So kind of Chris to put his Penguin name even tho the game no longer exists
I got to enjoy Club Penguin through a child’s eyes and now as an adult to actually see the creative processes behind what came to be…amazing! I can’t express how much this game was a part of my childhood and the memories I have surrounding it. Thank you so much for making another video!!
I totally agree with you on wigs and voices
And yeah, they started to get way too harsh with limiting things for non-members after a few years, that's about when I stopped playing
God, I wish you had the power to bring club penguin back. 2005-2009 were the best years, and I absolutely love the cute charm it used to have during those years. the island felt like a real community, you just can’t get that same vibe anywhere anymore. I hope someday it comes back
MAN, i feel you so hard with the hair point
As a kid, having wigs were super important for that sense of immersion I had, I was more able to closely relate with my penguin the more i humanized, but, when i was revisiting the game as an adult I absolutely found myself leaning more and more towards those goofier aesthetics. Y'know I was playing for a sense of fantasy and escapism, which i guess in hindsight wigs ironically may've taken away from.
i can totally see the addition of wigs also being a microcosm of club penguin's future aesthetics
5:53 bro's talking about club penguin having a solar eclipse for 5 days as being unrealistic meanwhile its been daylight for the past year, twice that of antarctica
i think it'd be nice to hear about more of your experiences with working on club penguin, even if it isn't another list like this (although a "5 things i wanted in club penguin but didnt get in" video would be nice to see). nice video :)
Man, I'm sorry.
As someone who obsessed over club penguin when he was a kid, the question of "why's it suddenly night for halloween?" really never crossed my mind, but I can tell it was something you were really passionate about.
I'm always glad to see that the love for Club Penguin is still alive, even though the game may not be around anymore (in any official capacity)
PLEASEEEEE make more videos about your time at Club Penguin. I would be so happy to hear more things about the game from behind the scenes.
Herbert P Bear is a GOATed villain. *Nobody can change my mind!!*
One of the best parts of CP were the missions. Always believed there were too few of them. Loved the fact that there was a villain. Thank you for making these videos.
some of my favorite memories from club penguin are the special agent missions, and i loved the mystery of figuring out who the culprit with the white fur was!! that aspect of the game wouldn’t have had the same charm without herbert’s addition
I am so glad you brought up hair! As someone who joined in early 2007 before wigs were really a thing, I can also remember how jarring it felt. As an occasional novelty item, i.e. something like the Clown wig, I dig it! As a big widespread feature that eventually became the default appearance for penguins in practically every official render from 2009-onwards? Not a fan. The simplicity of the early penguin designs was so appealing, and the hair seemed to counter that philosophy!
I totally understand and respect your thought process regarding human voices, too, and Night of the Living Sled was a very charming extension of that rule. However, the pop songs that did eventually become implemented on Club Penguin and its UA-cam channel were fantastic. I still crank "Ghost Just Wanna Dance" every Halloween. So, I'm ok with how that one turned out!
As for Herbert... yeah, I'm glad other team members overrode your decision that one 😂 Herbert is iconic, Club Penguin just wouldn't be the same without him! Everyone loves a good villain, and the nuance of Herbert being a vegetarian who just doesn't care for the cold or loud music helped ensure the danger was never all too looming. I will say though, the gradual buildup to Herbert's reveal with the white hair in the missions was really cool. I remember being so invested and excited thinking about all the possibilities when it was teased. That was a really creative idea!
As a very dedicated Club Penguin player/UA-camr, it's really cool seeing these more candid discussions about the behind-the-scenes of what made the game click. Thanks for the video, keep up the great work!
Honestly you're super right about the clashing of hats and hair. My wig in-game became a mainstay and because of that it was hard to subtly move away from my "signature look" by adding a hat without kind of ruining it.
Man I miss Club Penguin so much, I played from around 2007-2011 or so and went back every now and then during the remaining years. I wish it was still around now even as a 25 year old I know I'd still have a blast with it. Thanks for everything Chris, you and the team made some of my best childhood memories
Making the first hair option be a clown wig is so beautiful
Also making the Villain an animal that also lives in a cold place, but doesnt actually exist around Penguins (and therefore doesnt have a real life connection to killing and eating them) was a really nice yet probably not done on purpose move. Having the villain be an animal that literally kills penguins in real life would have just not been the vibe, yknow?
i feel like i’ve stumbled across a very familiar safe space on your channel, thank you for helping create all the fun i had as a kid
I love how he was so focused on the science of things for a game of ninja penguins who are also secret agents and talk while waddling and making fart noises
dude night time on club penguin was THE BEST part of the game in my opinion. genuinely my favorite part of the entire game. The eclipse science thing would've bothered me too ngl haha
It would be great to take a twist on this video and note some things that you wanted in the game, but didn’t make it for one reason or another. Thank you for making all these behind-the-scenes videos Chris!
Glad you are back! Club penguin was very important in my childhood and I really love everything about the early artwork, awesome work! Love from Brazil 🇧🇷😘
I love your videos, these have a huge insight into the tiniest of details for things I grew up wondering, I remember voting for wigs to stay... I'm now so sorry Chris
Don't be! It was for the best! They were divisive, but a lot of people loved them. :)
I definitely don't think you were wrong about that last one. Even as a kid, I knew how unfair it was to take parts of the game away from free players and demand that they pay to access them again. I think there would've been enough incentive for membership without locking away parts of the minigames, perhaps even more so if _new_ content was added for members.
Great Video, and thank you for a great childhood! Can you do a video talking about the puffles, Why they were made? How you guys felt about Puffles and just basically a video fully about Puffles?
Great idea! That would be a fun topic!
Herbert and Klutzy were my favorite characters of the whole game, can hardly imagine Club Penguin without them. They also paved the way to future additions like the Protobot and Tusk (very underrated by the way)
And you might have a point about the penguins becoming more "humanized". As the years went by you could see them become more slender and fashion-oriented...but I suppose it was inevitable.
It’s so cool to hear the backstory for Herbert P. Bear being added to the game - I loved the missions as a kid, so learning something new after all this time feels really dear to my heart. Thank you ^-^
As a lifelong Club Penguin fan, this video was magnificent! Loved hearing everything from you. (I was a fan of hair though I'm sorry XD)
Whilst I, a science fanatic as yourself, agree how little a solar eclipse lasts. I'd think that's not the most unrealistic thing to point out when you are working on a game with talking penguins who can build a town on an iceberg, ride in minecarts for fun, and work in a secret agency and ninja dojo as side jobs.
i played CP pretty religiously from 2006/2007 - 2009/2010, so i actually remember a lot of these being added. i remember wigs being added and having some mixed feelings about it, i remember the excitement of the mystery of the white fur, and i always liked the lack of human voices. but it was the increased member gating that pretty much got me to stop playing. not entirely, because i'd found other things that completely ate up the family internet (bandwidth truly was such a problem), but even as someone who had previously been a member i remember logging on and being upset. there was so little to do day to day, and even less to do during some of the parties, which had always been my favourite part. anyway, really enjoyed this video, always enjoy these kind of insights.
14:52 I LOVED THAT ASTRO-BLASTER GAME!
I would log in to Club Penguin every day just to go play it
The three bears remind me of the three snowmen from card jitsu snow. I wonder if they were a direct inspiration for the design of the snowmen
Good question! I don't know... now I'm wondering too!
Just discovered your channel and all I have to say for now is: thank you so much. I used to be bullied in my childhood, had no friends and my parentes used to work all day, leaving me only with the computer. Club Penguin was my safe and happy place. Thank you, really, thank you so much. I miss club penguin.
I always thought Iceberg was a lot cooler of a room without the Aqua Grabber mini game there. Like how it was at the beginning before it was added, the room had a cooler vibe imo
I still remember when i was a kid and played misson 5 with the Herbert shadow figure with klutzy, it absolutely terrified me especially with the music it was paired with and because of that i didnt play PSA missons for a couple of years 😅
Return of the king. Club Penguin was my entire childhood, even above Minecraft. Videos like this invoke the perfect amount of nostalgia while inviting new information for my now adult brain. Love behind the scenes stuff!
I think one of the things I didn't like about Club penguin was that you could buy all of these items when you had a membership, but once that membership ended, you couldn't wear the items anymore. It would have been nice if everything you bought during membership was still accessible to you, because I feel as if you still earned those items even after the membership was done. I guess from a business standpoint it makes sense, but also I feel like I would have still craved the need to get a membership because of the want of new items coming out. It is one of the reasons that I stopped playing around 2010-2011 time because I made the shift to roblox, in which it had a system where you could get a lot of items through the in game currency without membership, and with the membership it was easier to get items and you were able to keep said items after the builders club expired.