Spike Hike Answers Your Questions

Just over a month ago I asked you to submit your questions for an interview with Spike Hike. It took a lot longer for me to go through the comments and send some of the questions to Spike Hike than I meant for it to, however as promised here is the interview with Spike Hike! The post received over 200 comments. Of course Spike Hike can’t answer every question, however I did send him as many as I could without overloading him. Out of the 200 comments containing easily 250 to 300 questions or more, I picked out 20 questions at random. I do apologise if your question was not answered. The questions sent to Spike Hike range from being about Club Penguin’s future plans, questions about the game in general, or even about Spike Hike himself! He’s shared some really interesting items about the game, even giving a few hints. Here are the questions I sent Spike Hike along with this answers. Enjoy! :)

1. How did you find out about Club Penguin Memories?
I’ve heard about Trainman1405 for years from the CP team. Everyone on the team reads his blog.

2. What is your favorite Club Penguin party?
Hmm….tough one. I’ve loved both Medieval Parties for the last 2 years although like a lot of kids I wish we had Scorn and the quest in retrospect. I loved the original Marvel party! That was just hugely epic! I like all the “travel” stuff we’ve been doing this year – the limo, the road, the surfing – that stuff is awesome and we have more of it coming. Operation: Blackout was awesome! Everyone was just so pumped for that one and The Director reveal made everyone on the team cry because her voice is our finance woman that we all love. Puffle Party has to be my favorite every year! It keeps getting better and better and the Puffle Hotel and Rainbow Puffle were just amazing this year. There’s a great mechanic going into the December party where members can do something cool to help non-members. It may be one of our best ideas yet and the perfect CP type of play. We shall see!

3. Would you like to see Club Penguin have more rooms?
Yes eventually. Here is the problem – the way CP is shared into servers where the entire world is on a server is a major problem for community. Even the most popular servers only have a few rooms that are busy at any one time. Most servers can look like a ghost town, especially during the way. The more rooms you add the worse because people are that more spread out across rooms and shards.

We have a new technology that we call CPNext and it is the future of Club Penguin. Today you know it as “My Penguin” but eventually all of CP everywhere will use this technology. CPNext works completely differently when it comes to sharding and grouping. We don’t have the concept of “servers” anymore – which I know will bum some people out – but its a better experience for most people because we automatically group you with other Penguins and every ROOM is in effect a shard. That way, if we need 1000 versions of the Town and only 1 version of the Underground Lake, we can have only as many as we need at any one time of those rooms. And theoretically those rooms will never be empty because we only spin up as many as there is demand for, so the CP world should feel a lot more busy. We also have the ability to dial it up and down to make it less busy in different rooms if we need to.

Now, back to your question of more rooms. Now that we can group people together better, we don’t have to worry about more rooms spreading out the audience too much. And we can do LOTS of different things with the new tech. CP could conceptually have an UNLIMITED number of rooms for you to explore and maybe those rooms are only revealed over time as you discover them. Or remember Operation Hot Sauce where we had an EPF mission in world? Imagine we bring back missions like that that happen in world only instead of being temporary like parties, you can play through them any time you want, and we group you with other EPF agents who want to play at the same time. Its incredible stuff and it will allow us to do SO MUCH MORE with CP.

4. I think most players are missing old Club Penguin parties like Water Party, Western Party, Festival of Snow. Are they going to return sometime?
It’s a balance. At any one time 2/3rds of the audience are new players and we have to keep the parties feeling new and fresh or CP runs the risk of feeling dated. But the older players are really important so we try to bring back parties or reinvent old party ideas. Teen Beach had a lot of elements of the Water, Summer, and Music Jam Parties because players were asking for them. It’s a balance. Also, not all the parties that people are nostalgic about were as popular as people remember. For example, April Fools and Earth Day were two of our worst attended parties. They had a super passionate group that wanted them but most of the audience didn’t show up. So the best ideas we bring back and some of them we stop doing if the audience didn’t seem to like them.

5. Are there any plans to release new game stamps?
Yes but we need to rewrite that whole system. New stamps are actually really hard to put in but not a lot of people actively collect them as is. We’re going to rebuild them as part of a general overhaul of our social systems and we think we can really take stamps to the next level!

6. Are you, Polo Field, and others ever going to have the same system as mascots where when you send them a friend request it’s automatically accepted?
We want to! It’s another system that will get upgraded and when we do, we will add a lot more mod functionality.

7. Why did Club Penguin change the art style of penguins?
There’s never actually been one art style for CP. There have been literally dozens and it depended on who the artist was. The look of the penguin started to get all over the place. We wanted to update the Penguin while keeping its spirit and making more consistent. We also made changes to make the Penguin more possible so we could do action shots with them. It was much harder to do that in the old art style.

8. What’s in store for the 2014 year?
Lots of secrets of course! There will be a major push on mobile and we want to get onto other devices as well as add more parts of CP. There will be the biggest expansion of Puffles in CP history and we have some amazing things planned for Card-Jitsu. I can say no more but its going to be awesome. We’re doing some of the best work we have ever done right now.

9. I’ve noticed there has been a lack of new Club Penguin toys. Will there ever be new merchandise? (this excludes memberships)
Yes! We’re working to bring back merchandise now and we are starting with new custom t-shirts in the next month or so!

10. What are your thoughts on the Club Penguin experience? What has made Club Penguin the success it is today?
I think the Club Penguin community is what has made CP a success. There aren’t a lot of safe places for kids to play together online. And there aren’t a lot of places where you can be accepted for who you are and where being you is the coolest thing you can be. CP really has that genuine positive true community feeling and that’s honestly what’s made it great.

11. Do you play Nintendo Games like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong? Do you also play the Sonic The Hedgehog games?
Yes! They are some of my favorite games! I love everything Nintendo has ever done!

12. What ever happened to the Club Penguin Shorts like Puffle Trouble, Best Seat in the House, etc? Will there be more?
We will do more. They are really expensive and take a long time to do and so we have experimenting with faster, more regular content. But yes we want to do more and we are working on some ideas now.

13. Will the My Penguin app ever have all of the island rooms and/or parties?
Yes to both!

14. What happened to igloo contests? Will there be more in the future?
Contests are really hard to do around the world because there are a lot of laws governing them. We’re working on ways to do it now.

15. Will night ever come to Club Penguin?
Absolutely!

16. Why don’t you make pins smaller, like it was before? They were more of a challenge to find back then, and it was fun.
Interesting idea! I’ll talk to the team!

17. Why was Fall Fair cancelled this year?
Lots of people were telling us they wanted Medieval Party so we did that! But we listen and if people would like to see the Fair….

18. Will the non members item selection in the Penguin Style ever change?
Yes. But slower than member content.

19. Will the Penguin Band come soon? They haven’t visited for a long time.
I don’t think we have them planned for this year but definitely in 2014!

A huge thank you to Spike Hike for taking the time out of his busy day to do this! I really appreciate him doing this and I’m sure all of you do too. Hearing about the technical aspects on how Club Penguin runs is interesting and the hints on what to expect in the future sounds very neat! I wonder what the biggest expansion of Puffles is going to be? So many questions! All will be revealed overtime…

Want more? You can read my interview from 2011 with Hamustar from the Club Penguin Team here.



92 thoughts on “Spike Hike Answers Your Questions

  1. I want the Fair, and Spike hike or anyone else if your reading this
    1. Make JPG (Jet pack guy) a mascot.
    2. From now on on the medival party make the quests be there.
    3. What do you mean by there are laws govering igloo contests?

    • Nowhere near an expert, and I may end up being far off on the situation but I’ll give it a go. I’d assume there are laws covering global contests and since Club Penguin is available in, I’d assume, almost every country, they have to find ways to do it ‘legally’ without being penalized? Not entirely sure and don’t take it as 100% accurate.

  2. On the number 3 question.
    Does that mean we would never, ever be able to be in a room alone?
    My real life is noisy –
    I like to come on a mostly empty server sometimes just to be alone and sit to listen to the waves.

    • Me too, I never go to servers with 3 or 4 bars, I like to be alone, or with 2 o 3 penguins in the same room ,but not with 30 penguins, but if I’m going to meet a mascot, obiusly I have to go to a 4 o 5 server, but this is when I’m meeting a mascot.

  3. Jeeze, HOW MUCH ARE THEY DOING TO CJ?
    First Dojo, then fire then water then snow, all three elements! I doubt they will be doing shadow ninjas and ihope they dont cause the idea sounds stupid.

  4. Oh my gosh! There are a lot a sneak peeks here! I’m surprised that CP hasn’t said anything about it on the blog. I can’t wait for night to come, and The Penguin Band, they haven’t visited the island in FOREVER!

    Waddle On!

  5. Wow! This interview was really informative! I think you did a great job of selecting questions, Trainman! And I’ve NEVER heard a team member talk so openly before. This was really awesome, Thanks, Train :’3

  6. Oh I forgot to mention, I like the idea of CPNext, but I’m a little worried it will become overly crowded.. I hope that CP will make an option where you can choose if you want to be in a room that can hold less penguin, or more penguins.. I also hope that CP makes a way that you can still meet up with friends..

  7. Jumping jacks hit ’em! One…two…three…I am so pumped up now!

    (you will only get this if you watch Lego:The Movie trailer)

    • High five! I cannot wait for The LEGO Movie, either!

      “Take him to the melting room.”
      “Isn’t there supposed to be a good cop too?”
      “Hey buddy, you want a glass of water?”
      “Yes, actually…”
      “TOO BAD!”

  8. Thanks for answering my question Spike Hike and Thanks Trainman for posting it.
    Looks like 2014 will have lots of surprises

      • Well? TO BAD. It’s just the way technology has to get updated. Do you think many computers use Windows 98 these days? Not really, because it’s OUTDATED. You see?
        If they use outdated software and technology, people might as well complain! The old technology might as well break the game. I hate the servers going as much as you do, but remember, the technology will have to get updated at some point.
        And I agree with Jjoeyxx.
        *Gives Jjoeyxx high five*

  9. I think that Club Penguin will unfold all the myths and legends of the island in 2014. They started with puffles. Rainbow and Gold puffles were just rumours but now officially as pets!

      • …Yeah and the magic of the mystery will disappear. Eventually, what will be there next to discover? We always loved thinking of the next anniversary hat 1 month earlier, then in 2012 it was confirmed the 7th was blue and gold cuz of the Yearbook Quiz Cards and this year it was Rainbow because it has been said 1 week before the anniversary. We also loved spending time of what thing the party would be about, now thanks to Game On, they are spoiling most the fun of the game. I am starting to not watch Game On anymore until the party starts so yes, CP can still do Game On. Also, we loved thinking of the Director’s Identity and many myths and rumors. Then, the iceberg might be tipped, we might discover Rockhopper Island, the REAL secret of the elements (CJ Shadow) but then, now what? WHAT thing there will be next? Eventually CP would lose the magic of many things, the magic of the mystery. I know they should reveal them but I think we should still take some time for it…Honestly I am unsure if CP should reveal the secrets or not. But I still hope that after CP reveals ALL the secrets we thought (Rockhopper Island, Iceberg, CJ Shadow), there would be even more secrets ahead. Such as a secret EPF Agent being a traidor helping Herbert and Protobot. That would be a good secret.

        Also, one more thing, if we tip the iceberg, where will we play Aqua Grabber?

  10. Wait, so if what he said in 3 happens, then if you and your bud decide to meet at the forest for example, will you sometimes not see each other? Cause that could be annoying if you’re trying to meet certain people…

  11. I love the new art style.
    It gives them more personality!
    I can’t wait for more shorts.
    But I didn’t know they cost a lot DX
    Gosh.
    But hurray!
    The whole teams knows about you!
    I hope you get a job there :)

  12. he answered my penguin band question!!!! :D i can’t wait to meet them in 2014, night coming!!! and also many other good answered questions for the penguins who dind liked some updates!, thank you mr spike!!

  13. Hey Trainman,I cannot insert any tweets made by polo because when I type @polofield in the By user box,it shows that ‘No tweets match your search query’. So please help me!

  14. Hey Trainman!

    Could I post this interview on my website? I’ll include your name, for sure! :)

    Secondly, is there any Email or Skype on which I can contact you personally? I promise this is not gonna be something stupid, haha!

    Thanks!

  15. I’ve asked Spike Hike if he can clarify the CPNext thing for meeting mascots and friends. I’ll let you know what he says. :)

  16. Someone, PLEASE ask about server-jumping! Like switching from one server to another instead of logging- out then back-in taking ten years -_-‘

  17. Hey Team!
    Fabulous questions, Trainman1405! It is very cool that Spike Hike answered all your questions! I wish I could be you! Haha. Anyway, everyone here at the Club Penguin Australian Team views your website, and loves it! If you have any questions regarding the Australian office, or Club Penguin just reply to this comment to speak to me directly, or contact us at support@clubpenguin.com. Although, I may not be the one who replies, do me mindful of this.

    Thank You,
    Waddle On,
    Jimmy
    CPAU Team

  18. Spike, can you redesign the box dimension so we can visit all the fun dimensions all the time? That would be awesome, and it would make up for no April fools party.

  19. Sigh, I hope that server idea wont come through, if it does come through nobody will be able to make cp movies and comedys because there will be random people that are not in the movie or comedy inside the movies or comedys. I also hope that full club penguin wont come on My Penguin because it kind of defeats the unique and origional version of the computer club penguin.

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