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. Stephen MacDonald, who served as a senior manager at Disney between 2012 and 2015, recalls that the platform peaked at more than 300 million registered accounts. The demise of Adobe Flash effectively ended that penguin‑filled world, and the mobile‑only follow‑up, Club Penguin Island, never managed to capture the same magic—its servers were turned off in December 2018, barely a year and a half after launch. In the meantime, Roblox has surged to become the first online experience for many children today.
Yet MacDonald argues that Roblox cannot replace the safety‑first ethos that Club Penguin championed. He explains that a typical progression used to look like this: a child would start with a preschool‑oriented title such as Peppa Pig, then move on to Club Penguin to learn basic online safety tools, and later graduate to more competitive games like Fortnite. "Now kids go straight from Peppa Pig to Roblox, and that jump is too big for their developmental stage," he says.
"The social tools in Roblox expose young players to a flood of adult interaction, and that environment isn’t adequately protected for ages six to thirteen." MacDonald’s concern is that many competitive titles treat younger players as "chum in the water" for older teens and adults, creating opportunities for predatory behavior. To counter this gap, he founded Magic Potion Games with the explicit goal of delivering a spiritual successor to Club Penguin. Backed by investors such as Square Enix, 1AM Gaming, 1Up Ventures, and Konvoy Ventures, and guided by industry veterans including Bungie co‑founder Alex Seropian and Club Penguin co‑founder Lane Merrifield, the studio is developing Imagine Island.
The new title emphasizes live moderation, age‑appropriate safety mechanisms, and is targeted at children aged six to thirteen. "Our mission was to go back into that space and give kids a safe bridge between preschool apps and the broader internet," MacDonald explains. "Imagine Island should be the stepping‑stone that lets them graduate to platforms like Roblox only when they’re ready." MacDonald lives in Kelowna, British Columbia—the same region where New Horizon Interactive first built Club Penguin in the early 2000s before Disney’s acquisition in 2007. He spent several years overseeing the game’s design and production, and he still remembers the extensive safeguards the original team built.
"Few people realized how many live moderators we employed—hundreds of staff whose sole job was to protect children’s content and to remove bad actors quickly," he says. "We worked hand‑in‑hand with law‑enforcement to report predators and get them off the platform as fast as possible." One of the flagship tools from that era was Community Sift, a chat‑filter and moderation system pioneered by Chris Priebe (brother of Club Penguin developer Lance Priebe) and later acquired by Microsoft in 2021. MacDonald notes that the system was cutting‑edge for its time, but the team also used subtle behavioral nudges. For example, if a player typed something “edgy,” the game would silently block the message while still showing the player that it had been “sent,” creating a social cue that the comment didn’t land.
"It’s like telling a joke that falls flat; the player learns to self‑moderate without feeling censored," he explains. Flash’s demise sealed Club Penguin’s fate, and although MacDonald was not involved with Club Penguin Island, he believes the shift to mobile‑only was a misstep. "There was pressure to go mobile because everyone was on phones, but a huge part of our audience still played on PCs.
Club Penguin ran on anything—from a high‑end PC to a toaster‑like netbook—making it universally accessible. That accessibility was part of the secret sauce." Since Club Penguin’s closure, Roblox’s user base has exploded, growing from 13.7 million daily active users in Q4 2018 to 144 million in Q4 2025, according to Statista. MacDonald observes that Roblox began as a tool‑creation platform, not a children‑first product, and its DNA differs fundamentally from Club Penguin’s child‑centric design. He does, however, acknowledge Roblox’s success in capturing youth attention, recalling the moment his team played the early Roblox game "Work at a Pizza Place" and realized they were facing a new competitive landscape.
His main critique remains that platforms hosting children must take responsibility for their safety. Recent U.S. Senate investigations have accused Roblox of prioritizing revenue and engagement over child protection. In response, Roblox introduced age verification for chat in early 2023, a "sensitive issues" content label in 2025, and restricted direct messaging for users under 13 in 2024.
Imagine Island was born from a simple question: "What core DNA of Club Penguin should we preserve, and how do we adapt it for a new generation that plays differently?" After leaving Electronic Arts in 2023, MacDonald reunited with former Club Penguin colleagues—Sascha Williams, who once led the Club Penguin studio, and Karin Johnson, his former party‑team lead—to raise venture capital. They secured a few million dollars to prototype Imagine Island, placing safety at the forefront from day one. "We first asked: how do we moderate? How do we guarantee online safety for kids?
Those were the foundational rules before we even thought about fun." The gameplay mirrors the original’s structure: players craft a custom avatar, 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. The game runs in browsers via a partnership with CrazyGames, echoing Club Penguin’s cross‑platform accessibility, and the team plans IP collaborations and an aggressive six‑month marketing push culminating in a major December launch. Safety remains the non‑negotiable pillar.
Imagine Island employs the GGWP moderation suite alongside human reviewers, and MacDonald sees AI as a future supplement rather than a replacement for human intuition. "My number‑one rule is: are kids safe? Everything else follows from that," he says. He likens the environment to a supervised school playground—children can roam in groups, but vigilant adults monitor the space to keep predators out.
User‑generated content is permitted, but the platform restricts asset uploads, allowing the team to control visual elements. Even so, MacDonald notes that players can arrange existing assets in undesirable ways, requiring ongoing moderation of in‑game spaces. When asked about the controversial phrase "time‑to‑penis"—a tongue‑in‑cheek reference to how the system blocks inappropriate jokes—MacDonald laughed and confirmed the phrase’s origin, emphasizing that the team constantly tests whether a parent walking by would feel comfortable with what’s displayed on screen.
"If a parent asks what the child is playing, the answer must pass the sniff test. That’s our guiding principle." The pandemic amplified the importance of virtual worlds for children, turning them into social hubs akin to a digital mall.
MacDonald observes that many Roblox experiences, such as the popular "Adopt Me!" game, are direct evolutions of Club Penguin mechanics like the Puffle system. He is surprised that few developers have attempted to recreate Club Penguin’s safe, child‑focused model, seeing a massive opportunity for Imagine Island to fill that void. For MacDonald, creating a game is a responsibility to deliver a positive societal impact.
He recalls a poignant moment when the Make‑A‑Wish Foundation brought a terminally ill child to the Club Penguin studio; the child drew a penguin, and the experience left MacDonald with a "punch to the heart"—a reminder of how powerful games can be when taken seriously. He hopes Imagine Island will become a lasting deposit in the world’s cultural bank, not a fleeting withdrawal.