Blue Reviews: Project: Super Secret

Hello, everyone!

After seeing the title of this post, you may wonder why I am reviewing a project and not a party. The reason for this is because I want to give my opinion on a lot of things, regarding Club Penguin. I always enjoy reviewing Club Penguin parties so I thought that it would make sense to review other aspects of Club Penguin. After all, this is a blog entirely based on opinion and thought.

Today, I would like to talk about Project: Super Secret: the mysterious and highly anticipated future of Club Penguin. To sum up, this project has, so far, lead to the development of a new app called Disney Mix. This app allows users to communicate with Disney fans in a unique way; “Chat, Share & Play” is the motto! This is the first time Disney Mobile have ever released a messaging app and it incorporates Club Penguin within it, along with many other popular Disney franchises. According to Spike Hike, this app is only a fraction of what Project: Super Secret is, entirely! Originally, however, Disney Mix was the main focus until the team decided that it was time to revive an old game.

That’s right! Club Penguin is getting a makeover and you have – most likely – heard this already. Not will this be a “makeover”, this project will be a brand new game, built from new technology! It will be in 3D! But what does this mean for Club Penguin, currently?

As of now, the team are not too sure what will happen to Club Penguin in the near future. Apparently, Adobe Flash will retire from internet browsers by sometime in 2017. Club Penguin is built on Flash which means that it will have to be put to an end before Flash no longer exists on the web. Though sad this may seem, all games have to come to an end, eventually. Club Penguin (by the time it stops running) will have exceeded – an amazing – 11 years of life! It is haunting when we think about all of the stuff we may lose but Project: Super Secret shines some light onto the situation. Only some light, though.

It has been confirmed that all of our items will be lost when Club Penguin ends. Nothing will be transferred to the new game except for our penguin names. Although this may sound like terrible news, it is actually something commonly sensible. It is annoying, considering that there is a new game ahead but what if there weren’t? We expect to see some continuity but the team are working hard to focus on bigger aspects, such as customization. With customization playing a big role in the new game, who needs their old items when we can make our own ones?

Don’t get me wrong, I also feel sad about this news. However, I have hope for the new game and I trust that the team will make the most of their time to make other aspects of the project even better! On the other hand, I am not too bugged about this due to some bigger news.

The new game will be for mobile only.

The rumours were true. Mobile technology seems to be the horizon of potential for future games. Using new technology may result in new advancements and changes. For frequent PC users, this news may hit you hard in the stomach (it did for me) and all we can do is respect the decision that the team made. If the game will end up being better, we must let it be. The only inconvenience caused by this is whether some of the audience own mobile technology that will be compatible with the new game. I, myself, have no intention of buying a new phone in order to play the new game which means my Club Penguin passion may die out sometime soon. Unless I manage to get my hands on newer technology, I cannot support the new game. This may be a common scenario for other people, too, and all you have got to evaluate is whether the game is worth it. Is it worth buying a new phone/tablet in order to play a new game? 

The Mean Project

Hello everyone!

Yeah, the truth hurts a lot of the time. Club Penguin seems to be routing a course which a lot of the community will find difficult to follow. If you haven’t heard the news, Project: Super Secret will not allow us to transfer our history to the new game. That means we cannot keep our coins, our clothing, our items, our stamps and our buddies. Although it may not sound that bad  (because we get to keep our names, apparently) it is quite depressing to hear. Especially when Club Penguin, on the PC, will shut down soon because of issues with Chrome not supporting Flash and probably because Project: Super Secret means a “new start”. As a result, all the things we have earned along the previous 10 years have become a lot more sentimental to us and now we know that we will lose them once Club Penguin comes to an end. It really is a sad thing to hear.

To be honest, I knew that Club Penguin will be ending anytime soon and I was preparing for what to expect. I mean, 10 years is a great lifespan of a virtual world and soon after its 10th anniversary, I was slowly anticipating the news to break out that Club Penguin will be reaching the end of its journey (on PC). It turns out that in August 2016, Spike Hike confirmed that Club Penguin will be discontinued – online – at some point but the team are discussing the broader picture.

The thing that really bugs me about all of this news is that Club Penguin isn’t leaving the world with a bang. Now we know that we will be losing all of our items and inventory, it makes it even worse and it annoys me especially since the Club Penguin community have pushed Club Penguin this far, yet it feels like our dedication to this game hasn’t been valued. I understand that Club Penguin are trying their best to do what’s right for the community, but it really feels like they are focusing on the younger audience too much. Little did I know that Project: Super Secret appears to be mobile only. Apparently, a lot of the younger audience prefer to play Club Penguin on their mobile and that is why Club Penguin are abandoning PC. If that is the truth, all we can do it let it depress us but I feel that Club Penguin need to address the full details very soon.

I have been playing Club Penguin ever since 2008 and – most of the time – I have been a member. Almost 8 years of being a member should feel heroic but it really feels deceived and pointless now that we are going to be losing everything we payed for. I feel like no respect it being payed back; some of us will just fade away from the community with nothing to look back on because there will be nothing. From the looks of things, I will be one of those players which means that I will probably retire from Club Penguin and its community.

To prepare myself, I am going to be planning on what I can do with this website next. As of 2017, The Blue Blog will no longer support Club Penguin unless I manage to get a decent phone. Even then, it would be complicated to manage Club Penguin entirely off mobile which is an alien concept to me because I am much more attached to PCs. Therefore, I need new ideas to inspire content on my blog. Over the next few months, I will be thinking.

This week certainly has disheartened me. I have found out a lot of stuff that will mean a lot of life-changing events to occur soon. If you are wondering where my sources are to support the facts I have stated in this post, I advise you check other blogs. This post is more like a pure, on-the-spot reaction to the news that has bombarded us this week. I apologise that this post wasn’t very happy but it’s honest and truly what I have to say. To sum up: I am losing respect for a game which I trusted in making a comforting end to the game. It turns out that it will all be destroyed by what we thought would have been the resurrection of Club Penguin; Project: Super Secret. I think that we have all been deceived. It’s a real shame but all we can do, for now, is wait for a post from Club Penguin.

Instead of arguing with each other on social media, these times require some support from each other so that we can prepare – the best way possible – for our future. Also, it is a good idea to make the most of what we have left of Club Penguin. If you have the time, join in on community events to make memories before they are destroyed. It’s inconvenient but it is something we have to get through together.

Waddle On!

-Blue21102

Island Discussion #28: New Dimension

Hello everyone!

We have reached the end of May which – importantly – only means one thing; we are slowly creeping towards a finished project that yet remains “super secret” to us. Project: Super Secret can be a lot of things that we possibly couldn’t even imagine. Even though it has been through a few years of production and will continue to do so for the rest of this year (possibly) this project still lives up to its name and I applaud Club Penguin for that. On the other hand, it makes it so much harder for us to assume what it could be and the hype may end up driving us completely insane – if it hasn’t done so already!

To be fair, we have received several sneak peeks since last year and they are becoming more frequent and expected. By the end of each month, the team will continue to give us a sneak peek into what they are creating until they finally announce it. Now, from what we have seen, the project seems to have a lot of depth and by that I mean a variety of aspects that could push the boundaries and turn Club Penguin into something totally new! Maybe it is a good thing? Possibly not? Well, I think it is about time Club Penguin takes a new step since they have succeeded for a noticeable amount of years as an Adobe Flash based game. However the last couple of years haven’t been so good and that is not because the team are becoming lazy. It is quite the opposite, in fact! They have been working on this super secret project for a while now and we are soon from witnessing the final outcome, possibly by the end of this year.

So in this post today, I feel would be useful to recap everything we know about the project but what I am really interested in is how we get there. Not just from one game to another, but also from Club Penguin (2D) to Club Penguin (3D). It highlights a huge leap so it would be fair to say that some people will be blown away by this game. But because of how different it is, will this make the acceleration from one game to another unrealistic? It depends how creative the team are. But I am going to be talking about this later because, right now, I need to recapitulate what we know about Project: Super Secret – currently. We are going chronological so back we go to June/July 2015 when we received our first sneak peek.

Remember when Riyita (owner of Club Penguin Space) visited the Club Penguin Offices in Kelowna last year? It must have been a pretty amazing opportunity that I would snatch up any time, if I could. Anyway, Riyita was lucky enough the test out a “small” sample of Project: Super Secret. This was the Clothing Customizer. So after he had left Kelowna and was able to manage his blog once again, Riyita was given permission to show what he had made – with the Clothing Customizer – to the rest of the Club Penguin Community and (believe me) we were drowned with hype! This was the first time we managed to have a look at a physical representation of Project: Super Secret so you can imagine how surprised and thrilled we were.

A few days later (early July) Club Penguin officially confirmed this sneak peek and showed off a little video of what the early Clothing Customizer looked like at the time. Since it was a year ago, development of the app was obviously not final so what you see in the video may not appear in the official product. Below I have left an image of a fully customizable hoodie that featured in the video. If you want to see the video, click here. You can also check out Riyita’s small sneak peek right here! 

“Nothing Lasts Forever” – My Thoughts

Hello everyone!

Today I just wanted to explore some different kinds of topics on this Blog. Some in which I have not blogged about in my career even though I would like to. Sometimes I can be a very opinionated Penguin. The only form of posts I have expressed my opinions in are my party reviews however I thought it would be nice to step outside of the island for a bit and think about Club Penguin as a massive virtual world for kids.

Okay, I admit; I am not at all good with facts and figures on when Disney had bought Club Penguin and how much incline and decline there has been in traffic over the past years. I am not at all bothered to research it too because I know a lot of posts out there who provide details so copying will not do much good. My intentions with this post are to explore the journey Club Penguin has taken on ever since 2005. It has been a long one and it has been very interesting.

Back when Club Penguin was developing into something much bigger (The Big Update) it was surprisingly successful. Reasons for this were because Club Penguin took on a unique form of chat rooms and the visuals of the chat rooms helped to extend a world of imagination for kids. With Experimental Penguins (pre-Club Penguin) Lance Priebe did a good job with creating a world about Penguins even though the concepts were quite bland and the software was not as advanced as the current one Club Penguins runs on now. However back then, kids would have thought of Experimental Penguins as something big which was as a result of a new virtual world! Back then, the traffic was not as good as it is today, yet the whole point of this post is to illustrate how Club Penguin became something which appealed to more and more people until recent years.