Practicum - Jamie (Blog #7: Tween/Kid Audiences)

My last post I wrote about my experiences with the tween game SuperSecret. For this final posting I will focus on Club Penguin. So I've been playing Club Penguin for a while now. Club Penguin wasn't like SuperSecret, where you are given additional tasks to complete from other people other than real players in the game. Instead, it was more social-oriented. Supersecret had that social networking element to it too, but it added additional people to present missions, whereas Club Penguin excluded those "extra" people and presented them as a checklist of missions needed to be completed within a booklet. Also, I found Club Penguin to be a little more successful in encouraging social networking with others, because most of their missions involved you to participate and work with other fellow penguins.

When I was playing the game, one thing I was very hesitant in doing was "friending" other penguins, because I felt like I was being a creeper; no one actually knows that I'm a lot older than them. So I did not try too hard to make friends. However, I was able to move pass that and friend a few penguins. I made a lot of friends when I was playing games with the other penguin players. And for some reason I felt less guilty to be socializing with them this way (games being the motivator to build a relationship).

So that's what happened the other day. I sat in a room and waited to have another player to play Connect 4 with me. Of course, since I am a lot older than these kids, and since I understood the logic behind the game a lot more, I won most of the games. There was this one time I was playing the game with this player. I always won, but the player seemed to be very intrigued and kept playing with me without letting anyone else play. When another different player quickly stoled my spot, that person I played with was not happy. I thought it was very funny that he was so immersed in the game, but also reassuring that this game interaction has developed into some acceptance. Immediately after, I recieved a friend offer, which I accepted. So I made some friends through interactively playing games with them. And some others were random friend offers that I accepted as well.

So really, if I were to sum this game up, I'd say it's the perfect MMORPG for tweens to involve themselves in getting an early introduction to adult MMORPG games. It's also interesting to watch the interactions of these kids as well. It was like watching these kids play in the playground with their friends, but in a fictional game space style. For example, I saw these penguins talking to each other, asking one which place to meet next, asking one to follow him/her to the next location, etc.