“Were you more of a Club Penguin kid or a Webkinz kid?”
I’m in class, or at work, or chatting merrily with some new acquaintances my age, and this question comes up, as it often does. My parents reminisce about MTV, and I reminisce with others from my generation about those early 2000s multiplayer games. Games were the main purpose of using the internet when I was a child, whether that meant visiting penguin igloos on a library computer or waiting ages on AmericanGirl.com for a racing game to load on our dial-up internet.
These games were short and sweet, and the multiplayer games revolved around friendships and spy missions, with only minor elements of challenging gameplay to fill in the gaps. I never had the nerve for games that were high-speed and required fighting, to the point where my brother and cousin once had to beat all the timed levels of a Little Mermaid 2 PC game for me. I enjoyed games the way I enjoyed reading; I wanted to walk through the story side by side with the character and feel a part of something, but I didn’t want an evil boss to leap out of the story and fight me. I loved Nintendo DS games such as American Girl: Kit Mystery Challenge, which allowed me to play through a series of mysteries and walk around the whole town straight from the pages of the books, or Imagine Figure Skater, which let me experience the highs and lows of an ice skater on her path to the Olympics.
I think this preference is part of the reason my interest in gaming abruptly stopped as I got older. My twelve-year-old self would probably be surprised to learn this, given that she ran a blog and YouTube channel dedicated to Club Penguin (please don’t bother looking for it). But gaming doesn’t feel like it’s for me, past a certain level. When you don’t want to fight but instead want a narrative that’s more involved than the “plant as much corn as you can and collect butterflies” that the “cozy gamers” endorse, it can be hard to imagine that there’s anything out there for you. I watched playthroughs on YouTube occasionally, but the games that were popular with my peers no longer appealed to me.
A few months ago, my partner and I played through Night in the Woods, by which I mean that they handled the controls and I helped make certain decisions. It was easy to become invested in the storyline, and it felt like a fun alternative to watching a TV show, since the act of playing involves you more deeply in the story. It’s been nice to fall into the habit of watching someone else play a game close up, but this isn’t the only area where games have slowly grown back into my life. I find myself playing a competitive mini golf game on my phone or exploring the truly independent landscape of itch.io. I used to think of things like mobile games as silly guilty pleasures, but if I’m going to play one, I might as well do it with enthusiasm.
You can hardly call yourself a gamer for playing a puzzle game or getting addicted to Minesweeper, but the fact that I’ve been interested in games at all feels refreshing. I think my younger self felt bad for spending time playing games when there were more creative projects to explore, but in a season of winter darkness and the temptation to doomscroll, choosing to focus on a fun puzzle or collaborate on a story can feel like you’re actually investing in some joy. I’m curious to see where it takes me next.
To all my former Club Penguin comrades: Waddle on.
Screenshot by user blakegriplingph on www.mobygames.com
Hannah McNulty graduated from Calvin in 2021 and stuck around Grand Rapids, against all odds. She has spent her last few years singing in choir, teaching herself to love reading again, and trying to learn every fiber art simultaneously. She currently works at Eerdmans Publishing, where you can find her burying her nose in old paperwork and forcing anyone within earshot to listen to her bad puns.
