How Club Penguin Works

There are two ways for kids to enjoy Club Penguin. Joining the site, picking and modifying your penguin avatar and moving around Club Penguin's virtual world is completely free. Anyone can create a penguin with a free account, and the steps are relatively easy compared to most online membership signup pages. After picking a color for your penguin, you're simply instructed to enter a Club Penguin username, a password and a parent's e-mail address. The site doesn't ask for any personal information beyond the e-mail; no names, addresses, phone numbers or birthdates.

So is that it to a Club Penguin membership? Well, not quite. A free account isn't technically a membership. The free account allows your penguin to walk (or waddle, if you will) around its virtual world while exploring places like icebergs, ski slopes, boats and beaches, play games and chat with other penguins. However, to do all the really cool stuff, like decorating your igloo and dressing up your penguin, parents need to buy their kids a membership.

There are three basic membership prices: $5.95 per month, $29.95 for six months or $57.95 for a full year. Occasionally, there are special promotional offers, like $14.95 for three months, but these offers are generally only available for a limited time.

When a penguin is decorating his or her igloo, it actually has a lot of choices -- especially since new features are added weekly or monthly. For instance, the icy homes can upgrade to two stories or morph into a snow globe design, and interiors can include drum sets, televisions, aquariums and more.

One thing parents should note is that if they do decide to purchase a membership for their children, it's most likely the company will collect the parent's full name, e-mail address and, of course, credit card information and mailing address. Of course, none of this information would make it over the Web site's chat function, which filters important personal information anyway.

So once kids are on Club Penguin, what can they do?

While members of social Web sites like Second Life mainly control avatars that are human-like in appearance, Club Penguin members move around their virtual world as penguins. The penguins and their environment are also drawn as two dimensional cartoons instead of three-dimensional bodies.

To move a penguin avatar around, users simply point and click where they want their Antarctic alter ego to end up. Reaching either side of the computer screen can take you to a different area, and there's even a map which penguins can use to locate specific locations.

According to Club Penguin, there are essentially four main things kids can do with their penguin avatars. They can:

Games are one of the major attractions of Club Penguin, mostly because winning at these games racks up coins for users. The mini-games are like most games you can find online. The majority of the games typically involve pointing and clicking and they might also involve skiing, tubing, catching things and jumping or avoiding obstacles. Instructions are given at the beginning of each game so it's easy even for younger penguins, and players can play as often as they like. The coins that the penguins win are the virtual currency in the Club Penguin world, and they let penguins buy clothing, including hats, wigs and other vestments (the sillier the better), and upgrades to igloos, which start off fairly plain and undecorated.

There are also countless parties and other events that penguins can either create and then host or get invited to and attend. Penguins can meet up with and talk to other penguins, and users communicate in instant messaging style; small text bubbles, like the ones in comic books, appear above penguins' heads when they say something.

So what does Club Penguin offer, both for children and to their parents?

The immediate benefit of Club Penguin for parents is the constant reminder of safety. In a time when most online communities are uncensored and lack total monitoring control, Club Penguin is practically Orwellian in its commitment to keeping an eye on potentially harmful behavior. Even the site's home page, where users go to sign up, is more parent-friendly than kid-oriented, with reassurances of "safety," "filtered chat" and "live monitoring." A blue badge with the word "safety" and two penguins, presumably a parent and its child, often rests in the top right corner of the page.

Club Penguin is extremely straightforward about its rules and often reminds users to pay attention to them. When you first create a penguin, the Club Penguin set of rules is the first bit of text you see. Users are encouraged to respect other penguins and everyone is reminded that swearing, bullying or cruel behavior toward fellow penguins isn't tolerated, and disciplinary action will follow. Site monitors will either pick up on this type of behavior, or penguins can report other penguins that start to get out of line. Talk that's deemed inappropriate by the site, such as references to drugs, alcohol, sex or race, is also not allowed. Club Penguin encourages users to keep personal information guarded -- things like real names, telephone numbers, addresses, e-mails or passwords shouldn't be passed out to other penguins. Finally, third party programs that allow players to cheat at games -- of which there are many, according to a Google search -- are not allowed, and a player using these programs risks banishment.

So, what's the downside to Club Penguin? Well, groups like Consumer Reports WebWatch note that most social networking Web sites like Club Penguin that target young kids are nothing but commercial traps meant to coerce users into buying nothing but virtual property. They also argue that the games don't necessarily offer any educational value -- in the case of Club Penguin, the games typically serve only to earn users more coins, which players can then put toward buying more digital stuff. However, Club Penguin is largely free of advertising -- an atypical feature of most social networking sites.

For more information about Club Penguin and other social networking Web sites, follow the links on the next page.