5 Things I Didn't Want in Club Penguin (but got in the game anyway) 

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

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!

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.

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.

So glad herbert exists, without him psa missions wouldn't be as cool as they are

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.

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

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.

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!

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

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.

As a dude in his 20s, I miss Club Penguin a lot.

Funny how almost all your gripes with these features were countered with "Yeah, but silly cartoon game logic."

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 (:

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

Now I wonder about the reverse, actually - what are things you *really* wanted in Club Penguin that never made it?

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😭😭

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'm in a perpetual state of missing Club Penguin - life is pain. Thank you for alleviating some of this pain for 16 minutes.

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

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

Awesome to finally get another Club Penguin video after years. Thanks for uploading more!!

Secret of the Fur was my favourite mission! I loved the mystery of it and the "whoa...a POLAR BEAR?"

When a content creator whose work you genuinely enjoy comes back after a long time, it really is the best feeling. Welcome back Chris!

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.

i like to imagine "ive been delayed" was just found on some old answering machine washed up on a beach on club penguin island

"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 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

The Legend of our childhood is back

12:00 this immediately threw me back to being 7 years old and unbelievably excited and intrigued to find out what that mysterious white fur was from...and the mysterious substances on it. What a good game Club Penguin was.

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.

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! :)

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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! 😊

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!!

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

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.

Oh man I liked it when they started using human voices for story things, and I still genuinely like the pop songs. I don't think I used the wigs very much but I liked that they were there

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 totally understand the thing about not wanting to add hair. i'm 19 now and if you asked me to make that decision now, i'd probably say the same thing as you, but as a little girl i LOOOOOOVED being able to have hair! i always picked "the flutterby" or "the sunray" and pretended i was hannah montana hahah

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 RU-vid 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/RU-vidr, 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!

So kind of Chris to put his Penguin name even tho the game no longer exists

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. 😄

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!

>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.

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!

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.

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 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

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.

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

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.

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 :)

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

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 agree with you on the last argument, locking everything behind a membership paywall was very infuriating and a step in the wrong direction.

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.

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'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)

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

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

can we have another video of 5 more things you didn't want in club penguin?

This was fascinating! I definitely had my own strong opinions about many of these topics during my time on Club Penguin. Wigs: There was definitely a portion of the Club Penguin playerbase who disliked wigs and wanted them removed. I was part of this group for some time, but I eventually grew to like wigs and actively wore them. The main issue I had with the wigs is that there were too many of them. Towards the end of Club Penguin's lifespan it seemed like every penguin had to have some sort of hairstyle, while hats were not released as frequently. Combined with a change in art style that made the penguins taller, it really seemed to me like they were trying to make the penguins into humans, which I strongly disliked. Solar Eclipse: Since I was also obsessed with astronomy as a kid, I knew something was wrong with Club Penguin's long solar eclipses. I loved the darkness during Halloween though, so I was fine with suspending my disbelief every Halloween. I was actually upset when they decided to switch over from the solar eclipse to the storm. This was mainly because I loved seeing the stars in the night sky, which the storm clouds now covered. However, I grew to love the storm more towards the end; I loved the thundering in the background. Human voice: For some reason, this never bothered me much. I actually liked being able to hear the voices of some of my favorite characters, such as Rockhopper and Sensei. I always thought the pop songs were a bit weird though. I definitely liked some of them, such as "Cool in the Cold", but I mainly viewed them as a product of the inevitable "Disneyfication" of Club Penguin. Herbert P Bear: Herbert is absolutely one of my favorite Club Penguin characters; I can't really imagine the game without him. He never really seemed threatening to me though. I remember being scared by his first appearance in Secret of the Fur, where he and Klutzy appear as some sort of crab-bear monster (though I think the music that played during this largely contributed to my fear). However, in the following missions, Herbert was more funny than threatening to me. There were definitely times where he was a significant threat, such as in Operation Blackout, but I really just remember him as that silly bear who dances and loves seaweed pizza. Member Minigame Levels: Even though I was a member for the duration of my time on Club Penguin, this change really annoyed me. I absolutely despised the idea of putting paywalls around content that was previously free. The amount of content that they left for non-members was also pathetically small in some games (5 levels of Astro Barrier? Really?). I also know nothing about business, so I have no idea if this change was required to continue funding Club Penguin's content. I just wish that they'd created new content for members instead of restricting non-members, especially considering that non-members already couldn't do too much in Club Penguin. Again, thanks for sharing! It's really interesting to hear about Club Penguin's changes from an insider view.

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.

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 ^-^

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

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?

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.

Herbert P Bear is a GOATed villain. *Nobody can change my mind!!*

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

Oh, this video was a delight! It's so great to hear more behind-the-scenes talk about the game's innards and what could've been! For the Eclipse thing, if I were in the place, I would've added a sprinkle of Gary's Shenanigans to the mix. Partially because I just love Gary and his strange, yet fun inventions. Maybe he somehow makes something that's so big it obscures the sun, or somehow ends up creating massive amounts of clouds on an experiment gone wrong! Still adding a little bit of that Club Penguin-branded silliness, without risking the furrowed eyebrows of the astronomy lovers amongst us! (but, uh, probably risking weather fans' terrifying stares..)

massive fan of you and your work, huge inspiration, and you probably won't see this but silly funny penguin game has had such a positive impact on me and my life and I needed it to be said that I am so thankful for all yours and the whole team's work on the game

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.

Your contempt for hair reminds me of how, when I was a kid who played Club Penguin just after the Disney acquisition, I also secretly hated how hair looked. However, as I was a girl who was lucky enough to have membership, for the sole purpose of fitting in I usually wore the brown wig with the pink bow that most other member penguins trying to appear feminine also always seemed to wear. Looking back, I probably should have embraced self-expression more, and that's not the fault of the game; however, I also feel if everyone was forced to be bald, I don't think players would favor certain head items nearly as much, and I don't think splits between players of different genders would be nearly as defined (and, honestly, nearly as limiting). Also, writing this comment has made me realize how this is one of the earliest kids’ games with a customizable player character I can think of where you don’t pick if you’re a boy or a girl at the beginning, and your gender is solely signified by whatever you wear. Technically, all players start genderless, and anyone can wear and mix-and-match anything, which honestly feels so ahead of its time, and I think being able to have that freedom is part of the reason I loved the game so much. There were definitely times I chose masculine wigs and pretended to be a boy just for fun

I watched the video hugging my penguin plush that still lives in my bed. Thank you for still talking about Club Penguin, that means a lot to a lot of people!

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 am so gad that you added Herbert to Club Penguin. It was arguably the greatest creative choice you ever made as it facilitated the best feature of the entire game: the PSA missions. Those missions would not have been as fun or as epic without a villain and many of my other favorite parts of the game were completely dependent of Herbert like the Hydra attack, Operation Hibernation and my favorite Club Penguin event of them all: Operation Blackout. We really owe it all to Herbert. And lest you still worry about Club Penguin no longer being an escape from difficulties of life, there is no greater escape that imagining you are the hero. And how can we be the hero without defeating a villain? The PSA missions made us players feels like that so Herberts addition only enhanced our feelings of escape. Even better, battling Herbert was an incredibly engaging story and immersed us in the world. Of course, being completely immersed in the Club Penguin made it even more of an escape because it didn't just feel like a game anymore, it felt like a real world. So in the end, adding Herbert didn't make Club Penguin less of an escape, quite the opposite. It reenforced that design goal you passionately fought for. And of course, I and millions of other players are so grateful for it. ;-)

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 🇧🇷😘

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.

So much lore! I had so much fun with this video! I never imagined that the instrument in that soundtrack was whistling, it always sounded very unique O: Definitely agree with the last point, minigames were a huge part of the game itself and once I lost my membership before fully quitting the game in around 2014 I saw how bad it was for non-member penguins :/ Also, I never imagined a developer would be so opposed to hair on penguins, and I see the point! Definitely unnatural, but at the same time, for someone who had played for as long as there were wigs, penguins with no hair seemed unnatural, funny right? Thank you for taking your time to share more about Club Penguin, these videos are such a throwback! Waddle on Mr. Chris!

I'll always love hearing about this game! It's pretty interesting to hear what things didn't align with what you wanted in the game.

The intros and "was i wrong" are like 100% louder than your talking about the thing.

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.

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

Thank you for making another Club Penguin video!! I've been coming back to your channel so much for not only Club Penguin things but also your great music streams!!

Super interesting video! I'm glad I'm not the only one that felt like some ideas implemented into the game "humanized" the penguins a little much. I especially think the clothing in the later eras of the game made the penguins look too... human-like.

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!

Thwarting Herbert was one of the main reasons I kept coming back to the game because I loved those missions that had him so hecking much. Super glad he was added in!