Club Penguin, Disney’s flash‑based massively multiplayer online game that ran from 2005 until its shutdown in 2017, was a defining digital playground for a whole generation. According to Stephen MacDonald—who served as a senior manager at Disney between 2012 and 2015—the platform boasted more than 300 million registered accounts at its height.
The disappearance of Adobe Flash effectively ended that penguin‑filled universe, and the mobile‑only follow‑up, Club Penguin Island, failed to capture the same magic, closing its doors in December 2018, just a year and a half after launch. In the years that followed, Roblox emerged as many children’s first foray into an online social world. While the platform’s popularity is undeniable, MacDonald argues that it cannot replace the safety‑first philosophy that Club Penguin embodied. He explains that, traditionally, a child would graduate from preschool‑oriented titles such as Peppa Pig to Club Penguin, where they learned basic online‑safety habits and tools before moving on to more competitive experiences like Fortnite.
Today, however, the progression often jumps straight from Peppa Pig to Roblox, a leap that MacDonald believes leaves young users exposed to adult‑oriented interactions and potential predation. He warns that in many competitive games, younger players become “chum in the water” for older teens and adults, making the environment socially unsafe. Motivated by this gap, MacDonald founded Magic Potion Games with the explicit goal of creating 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 places live moderation, age‑appropriate safeguards, and a strict focus on children aged 6‑13 at its core. “Our mission was simple: go back into that space and give kids coming from preschool products a safe, fun place to grow before they graduate to something like Roblox or beyond,” MacDonald says. He is based in Kelowna, British Columbia—the same region where New Horizon Interactive originally built Club Penguin in the early 2000s before Disney’s acquisition in 2007.
During his tenure, MacDonald oversaw game design and production, witnessing first‑hand the extensive effort required to protect young players. He recalls the sheer scale of the moderation operation: “Few people realized how many live moderators we employed—hundreds of people whose job was to guard kids’ content and keep bad actors out. We worked closely with law‑enforcement agencies to report and remove predators as quickly as possible.” One of the key technologies born from that effort was Community Sift, a sophisticated chat‑filter and moderation system developed under the leadership of Chris Priebe (brother of Club Penguin developer Lance Priebe) and later acquired by Microsoft in 2021.
At the time, it was cutting‑edge and set a high bar for online safety. Beyond brute‑force moderation, Club Penguin employed subtle behavioral nudges. MacDonald describes an example where a player typed a borderline phrase like “something edgy.” The system would silently block the message while showing the player that it appeared to be sent, creating a social cue that the comment was not well‑received.
“It’s like telling a joke and hearing no laughter—you feel uncomfortable and try something else. That feedback loop helped us socially engineer the type of content that could pass through,” he explains.
The demise of Flash sealed Club Penguin’s fate, and while MacDonald was not involved in the mobile‑only Club Penguin Island, he believes the shift away from a cross‑platform experience was a mistake. “There was pressure to go mobile because every kid has a smartphone, but a large portion of our audience still played on PCs. Club Penguin ran on anything—from a high‑end desktop to a toaster—making it universally accessible.
That accessibility was part of its secret sauce.” Since then, Roblox’s user base has exploded, rising from 13.7 million daily active users in Q4 2018 to 144 million in Q4 2025, according to Statista. MacDonald notes that Roblox began as a tool‑creation platform rather than a children‑focused product, giving it a fundamentally different DNA from Club Penguin. “Club Penguin was built with kids in mind from day one.
Roblox was designed for creators of all ages, and its evolution into a child‑centric hub was more of an accident than a design choice.” Nevertheless, he acknowledges Roblox’s achievements in engaging young audiences. He recounts a moment when his team played the early Roblox title “Work at a Pizza Place” and realized “we were in trouble because we didn’t have the technology to match what Roblox was doing.” The rapid rise of platforms like Minecraft and Roblox signaled a shift in the market, a “changing of the guard” that he could not ignore. MacDonald’s primary concern remains child safety. He points out that the U.S.
Senate recently opened an investigation into Roblox, alleging that the platform prioritizes revenue and engagement over protecting minors. Roblox has responded with measures such as age verification for chat, a “sensitive issues” content descriptor in 2025, and the removal of direct messaging for users under 13 in 2024. Still, MacDonald argues that more responsibility is needed from platforms that host children. Imagine Island was born from a simple question: “What is the DNA of Club Penguin that we want to carry forward, and how can we adapt it for a new generation that plays differently?” After leaving Electronic Arts in 2023 following the closure of his studio, MacDonald reunited with former Club Penguin colleagues—Sascha Williams, who previously led the Club Penguin studio, and Karin Johnson, who headed the party team.
Together they secured venture‑capital funding, raised several million dollars, and built a prototype focused on safety first. “We asked: how do we moderate? How do we ensure kids are safe online?
Those rules became the foundation, and then we started testing fun,” he says. Imagine Island lets players craft custom avatars, explore an island world, engage in minigames, complete quests, and participate in community challenges. The game reached over one million users within months of its beta launch, without any major marketing spend. It is available in browsers through a partnership with CrazyGames, echoing Club Penguin’s original cross‑platform accessibility.
MacDonald hints at upcoming intellectual‑property collaborations and an aggressive marketing push slated for December, describing it as “the moment I’ve been waiting for.” Safety remains the non‑negotiable cornerstone. The studio employs the GGWP moderation suite alongside human moderators, and they are exploring AI tools that can detect problematic conversation patterns. “My number‑one rule is: are kids safe?
Everything else comes after that,” MacDonald emphasizes. He likens the environment to an elementary school playground: “Kids can roam in groups, but there are adults watching to keep predators out.” While AI is not yet a substitute for human intuition, he sees it as a future supplement as the platform scales.
User‑generated content (UGC) is permitted, but the game restricts asset uploads, allowing the team to control visual elements. Nevertheless, players can rearrange existing assets in ways that may be inappropriate, requiring ongoing moderation of player‑created spaces. When asked about the phrase “time‑to‑penis,” a tongue‑in‑cheek reference to inappropriate content, MacDonald laughed, confirming that such topics are constantly on their radar and that the team strives to prevent easy creation of offensive shapes. He stresses the importance of parental perception: “If a parent walked by and asked what the child was playing, would Imagine Island pass the sniff test?
That’s the standard we hold ourselves to.” He acknowledges that kids will inevitably test boundaries, especially in anonymous online settings, but the platform is designed to make inappropriate behavior difficult and quickly flagged. Reflecting on the broader landscape, MacDonald notes that the COVID‑19 pandemic forced many children to spend formative years in virtual worlds, making those digital spaces as vital as physical ones. “Roblox became the mall for a generation,” he observes, and features like Roblox’s “Adopt Me!” mirror Club Penguin’s beloved Puffle system almost verbatim.
He is surprised by the scarcity of games that have tried to replicate Club Penguin’s safe‑for‑kids model, seeing a massive opportunity to fill that void. For MacDonald, the responsibility of creating a game that reaches children is profound. He wants Imagine Island to be “a deposit in the world 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 important video games can be,” he says, underscoring his commitment to making a positive, lasting impact. In summary, Imagine Island aims to revive the safe, whimsical spirit of Club Penguin while leveraging modern technology and a rigorous moderation framework.
By prioritizing child protection above all else, the game seeks to provide a trustworthy digital playground that prepares young users for the broader online world, offering a much‑needed alternative to platforms that may not place sufficient emphasis on safety.