Club Penguin, the Disney‑owned, Flash‑based massively multiplayer online game that ran from 2005 until its shutdown in 2017, was a defining digital playground for an entire generation of youngsters. Stephen MacDonald, who served as a senior manager at Disney between 2012 and 2015, recalls that at its height the platform boasted more than 300 million registered accounts. When Adobe Flash was finally retired, the beloved penguin world vanished, and its mobile‑first successor, Club Penguin Island, never managed to capture the same magic. Launched in 2017, the new title folded just a year and a half later, in December 2018, after failing to attract a sustainable player base.
In the meantime, Roblox has risen to become many children’s first foray into online gaming. Yet MacDonald argues that Roblox does not replicate the safety‑first ethos that Club Penguin embodied. He explains, “A typical progression used to be: a child starts with a preschool‑grade experience like Peppa Pig, then moves on to Club Penguin where they learn basic online safety tools, and only after that do they graduate to more competitive titles such as Fortnite.” Today, according to MacDonald, “kids are jumping straight from Peppa Pig to Roblox, and that leap is too risky for their age.
They are exposed to social tools that connect them with a large adult population for which they are not prepared.” He warns that many competitive games turn younger players into easy targets for older teens and adults, creating an environment where predators can thrive. Motivated by this gap, MacDonald founded Magic Potion Games with the explicit goal of delivering a spiritual successor to Club Penguin. The venture has attracted backing from Square Enix, 1AM Gaming, 1Up Ventures, and Konvoy Ventures, and has consulted industry veterans such as Bungie co‑founder Alex Seropian and Club Penguin co‑founder Lane Merrifield.
Their flagship title, Imagine Island, is being built around live moderation, age‑appropriate safety mechanisms, and a target audience of children aged six to thirteen. “Our mission was simple,” MacDonald says. “Re‑enter that space and give kids coming from preschool‑grade products a safe place to play before they move on to something like Roblox.” MacDonald now lives in Kelowna, British Columbia, the same city where New Horizon Interactive first created Club Penguin in the early 2000s before Disney acquired it in 2007. He spent several years overseeing the game’s design and production, and he still remembers the extensive measures taken to protect young users.
“Few people realized how many live moderators we employed—hundreds of staff dedicated to safeguarding kids’ content and ejecting bad actors as quickly as possible. We also worked closely with law enforcement to report and remove predators.” He points out that Disney’s team even built the technology behind Community Sift, a sophisticated chat‑filter and moderation system pioneered by Chris Priebe (brother of Club Penguin developer Lance Priebe) and later purchased by Microsoft in 2021. “It was cutting‑edge for its era,” MacDonald notes. Beyond brute‑force moderation, Club Penguin used subtle behavioural nudges.
For example, if a player typed a borderline phrase, the system would silently block it while showing the avatar as if the message had been sent. “It felt like telling a joke that no one laughs at, prompting the player to try something else.
In that way we could socially engineer what content made it through to the community,” he explains. The demise of Flash ultimately sealed Club Penguin’s fate, and MacDonald believes the mobile‑only pivot to Club Penguin Island was misguided.
“There was pressure to go mobile because everyone was on phones, but a huge portion of our audience still played on PCs. The original game ran on virtually any device—even a toaster—making it ultra‑accessible. That universality was part of its secret sauce.” Since Club Penguin’s closure, Roblox has exploded, climbing from 13.7 million daily active users in Q4 2018 to 144 million in Q4 2025, according to Statista. MacDonald acknowledges Roblox’s success but stresses a fundamental difference in DNA.
“Roblox began as a tools platform for creators, not as a children‑first product. Club Penguin was built from the ground up with kids in mind.” He does give credit where it’s due, recalling a moment when his team played the Roblox game Work at a Pizza Place and realized how far the platform had come. “We didn’t have the technology to match Roblox then.
It was a radical shift, and we saw games like Minecraft and Roblox pulling the audience in new directions. It felt like a changing of the guard.” MacDonald’s concern centers on responsibility. “If a platform hosts children, the adults running it must prioritize their safety. That isn’t happening enough.” His worries are echoed by a recent U.S.
Senate investigation into Roblox, which accused the platform of favoring revenue and engagement over child protection. Roblox has since introduced age verification for chat, a “sensitive issues” content tag, and, in 2024, blocked direct messaging for users under 13. Imagine Island emerged from a simple question: “What core DNA of Club Penguin should we carry forward, and how do we adapt it for a new generation that plays differently?” After leaving Electronic Arts in 2023 following the shutdown of his studio, MacDonald reunited with former Club Penguin colleagues—Sascha Williams and Karin Johnson—to raise venture capital.
Their pitch resonated, and they secured a few million dollars to prototype the new world. The game’s design process began with safety as the foundation. “We first asked how we would moderate, how we would keep kids safe online, then we layered fun on top,” MacDonald says.
Players create custom avatars, explore a vibrant island, engage in minigames, complete quests, and join community challenges. Within months of its beta launch in August, Imagine Island surpassed one million users without any significant marketing spend. Like its predecessor, Imagine Island runs in a web browser thanks to a partnership with CrazyGames, and the team plans IP collaborations and a larger marketing push in the coming months. “December is the moment I’m most excited for,” MacDonald reveals, hinting at aggressive expansion plans.
Safety remains the north star. The studio employs the GGWP moderation suite alongside human reviewers and is exploring AI tools that can flag risky conversation patterns. “My number‑one rule is: are kids safe?
Everything else follows from that.” He likens the environment to a supervised school playground—children can roam in groups, but vigilant adults monitor the space to keep predators out. While AI is promising, MacDonald cautions that it cannot yet replace human intuition.
“Human moderators still understand nuance better than any algorithm we have today, though we’ll integrate AI as we scale.” User‑generated content is permitted, but the platform restricts asset uploads, allowing the team to control visual elements. “Players can still arrange assets in ways that might be problematic, so we moderate spaces as well as chat.” When asked about the odd phrase “time‑to‑penis,” MacDonald laughed, confirming it was an inside joke that highlights how the team constantly evaluates whether content could be misinterpreted by younger users.
He stresses that parental perception is a key test. “If a parent walked by and saw a child playing Imagine Island, would the screen pass the sniff test? That’s our benchmark.” The pandemic accelerated the importance of virtual worlds for children, turning them into essential social spaces.
MacDonald notes that Roblox now functions as a digital mall for a whole generation, yet many of its popular experiences—like the Adopt Me game—are direct descendants of Club Penguin’s Puffle system. Reflecting on the scarcity of true Club Penguin successors, MacDonald says, “It blows my mind how few games have tried to fill that niche. There’s a massive opportunity.” He feels a deep responsibility as a developer to contribute positively. “I want this to be a deposit in the world’s cultural bank, not a withdrawal.” He recalls a poignant moment when the Make‑A‑Wish Foundation brought a terminally ill child to see the Club Penguin studio.
“We drew them as a penguin. It was a punch to the heart—realizing how powerful games can be for kids.” That memory fuels his commitment to building a safe, joyful digital world for the next generation.