My attempts to recruit players on a rainy weekend were not successful. People did not respond enthusiastically to a game described as “Rock, Paper Scissors but kind.” Selling kindness was hard. But nostalgia seemed easier, thus I searched for a Club Penguin remake without sketchy download processes. Leading with ‘Club Penguin’ was successful bait.
Game Play
After a test run with fellow puppet masters, we felt the Club Penguin medium didn’t need much modification from the teaching team version. The weapons worked as is but instead in reference to penguin avatars. We had to be more specific about the mechanics of targeting a person in the digital space (ie. needing to be right next to target penguins to be clear who the weapon is being used for) and confirming a kill (players chat ‘rip’ to confirm they were a player that got killed as there were a lot of non-player penguins on the server).
We scheduled the game for 4pm and sent the Club Penguin and Zoom links (for players to talk during the game) ahead of time. We planned to give players 10 minutes to set up a penguin if they hadn’t already and dress up their penguin. Players did not show up at the same time so some didn’t hear all of the game instructions and others had technical difficulties (ie. no chat function) thus players dropped out. We had 6 players (each player knew at least one other person) who stayed throughout the 2 rounds and 4-5 players who came and went. Round 1 was in the outdoor Town area which had a lot of non-player penguins (NPP). We moved inside the Gift Shop which had less penguins for Round 2.
In the Zoom Room while going through instructions people were reluctant to go off mute but once game play started, particularly when non-player penguins interacted with the game there were a lot of laughter. As puppet master I narrated aloud when non-players got involved or if I spotted a particular good weapon, purely out of excitement but upon reflection, calling out those moments led to many moments of smiles and laughter. The players also began calling out things they saw. Thus in addition to the chaos of the Club Penguin world, we had another layer of chaos in the room with people talking over each other or laughing. Our zoom room and non-player interactions reinforced a sense of camaraderie and ‘us-ness’ as a group who were doing something together. Specifically when players in the zoom room talked about surrounding the non-player penguin who asked what was going on and showering that penguin with compliments. There was a lot of joy and ease in giving out compliments too – maybe even more so since we were doing it through penguin avatars.
