Its genesis dates to 2000, when Mr. Priebe, working on computer games for children, “happened to glance at a ‘Far Side’ cartoon featuring penguins that was sitting on his desk,” said Karen Mason, a spokeswoman for Club Penguin in Kelowna, British Columbia. Work on Club Penguin began in 2004 and the name was selected in summer 2005, she added.
The club penguin history
1984Dave Krysko, one of the three founders of Club Penguin (CP), opens a business called New Horizon Productions (NHP). This business specializes in video production and editing services. NHP becomes New Horizons Interactive in 2005, the company that launches Club Penguin.
1995Lane Merrifield, the second of the three CP founders, starts working at Disneyland in southern California, an experience Lane mentions in articles that is important to the shaping of the ideals of Club Penguin.
October 1999Lance Priebe, the third of the three CP founders, starts up an online gaming business called RocketSnail Games.
July 2000A very early online multi-user communication program called Experimental Penguins, developed by Lance Priebe, first appears on RocketSnail. This chat program is a very early functioning prototype of the future Club Penguin service.
September 15, 2000Experimental Penguins wins its first award, the Cool Site of the Day.
September 30, 2000The RocketSnail website mentions that in the last month Experimental Penguins has received more than “25,000 visitors spending an average of 20 minutes each” using the game.
July 2001Experimental Penguins goes offline due to growing traffic to the game and costs related to bandwidth.
July 2001An updated version of Experimental Penguin gets its own website. This new version of Eperimental Penguin is renamed Penguin Chat.
January 2003Public testing of Penguin Chat begins.
2003A recent article I came across which mentions when the three founders from Club Penguin came up with the idea for the online business:
Quote:“The seeds of the idea for Club Penguin were planted when Lane Merrifield, Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe got together in 2003. Prior to that, Lance Priebe had been developing web-based games in his spare time while working for Dave Krysko at New Horizon Productions, a corporate video and multi-media production company. When New Horizon Productions hired Lane Merrifield as a sales representative these three innovators saw a unique business opportunity. Merrifield, Krysko and Priebe combined their business, creative and technical skills to come up with the idea for a kid-friendly social networking site that they would let their own children use without worry.”
April 2004RocketSnail develops a kids’ safe version of Penguin Chat for the company KidZap
January 2005New Horizon Productions launches its new website as New Horizons Interactive (NHI). Projects found in their portfolio include two orthographic room building tools, a component often found in online social networking experiences. One tool for designing a wine cellar and another for building a park. The New Horizon office comtinues to be located in Kelowna, British Columbia and the NHI “start up” receives no venture capital financing.
October 24, 2005The first Club Penguin site is launched through NHI.
May 2007NHI begins discussions with a number of companies to find a strategic partner who would acquire Club Penguin and provide support for even greater expansion of the Club Penguin service. Press announcements report that NHI made $60 million in revenues from CP for 2006.
June 22, 2007The RocketSnail website closes.
August 1, 2007Disney and NHI announce that Disney will be acquiring Club Penguin for $350 million in cash and an additional $350 million in earn outs if Club Penguin hits certain performance targets by 2009. It’s announced that Club Penguin has 12 million registered members and has over 700,000 paid subscribers to its service. Also announced is that Club Penguin expects to make $35 million in profit off revenues of $65 million within 2007.
