Disney takes over club penguin.
 

I heard on the radio today that Disney purchased Club Penguin for something like $350,000,000. Considering that headliner moved to club penguin to get away from that disaster known as VMK I am a bit concerned by this development.

However it shows the insane butt load of money these things can make so if the mouse does muck it up perhaps I'll become a world builder....

What is Club Penguin?

What happened to VMK?

I wondered when that was going to happen.

Since they re-vamped Disney Blast recently it appeared they have needed something to get the tweens into it. And VMK jsut wasnt doing it.
Club Penguin just looked right up their (disney's) alley. I was surprised to find out it wasnt theirs.

I wonder what that means to those of us with paid Club Penguin accounts.

It's like you're speaking a foreign language... what's club penguin?

I picture an exclusive lounge with the penguins from Mary Poppins as servers.

But I'm guessing that's not what it is.

Club Penguin is something to the effect of - you are a penguin with an igloo. You can play games to get points or money or whatever they call it to buy things for your igloo. You can also chat with others. Chat with predefined phrases only and chat that's filtered for "bad stuff" and monitored.

http://www.clubpenguin.com/

Wow, when I was little, we had a kid friendly real world, where we could play games, have fun, and interact with each other.
Budget cuts and insane litigation have made playgrounds look more like prison yards.

Back to the topic, Club Penguin from my limited exposure, seems to be more what VMK should have been in the first place.

Club Penguin is apparently HUGE. It's the MySpace of the tween set. That's what I heard, anyway.

Part of the reason it's so big is it has always had absolutely no advertising, so parents have no problem paying to have their kids play there. It caught on enough that kids in some areas feel left out if they don't have an account.

I had heard that people were beginning to line up to purchase it...we'll see if they end up abusing the trust of the parents.

And it trains kids to be good little consumers. To hear the conversation about it the other day on NPR pretty much what you do in the game are chores which earn you money so you can buy in game things.

Should be a perfect segue from that into a properly consumerist pro-Disney adulthood.