1. Welcome to the Club Penguin DS: Elite Penguin Force Post-Mortem
Welcome to the Club Penguin DS: Elite Penguin Force Post-Mortem. My name is Patricia Pizer. Please turn off your cell phones and remember to fill out the evaluation forms.
Postmortem

2. Obligatory Disclaimer
I am no longer an employee of The Walt Disney Company nor any of its subsidiaries. Bearing that in mind, I may not reveal proprietary information or confidential information pertaining to the title I will be discussing. Rather, this talk is intended to touch on some of the many issues that face projects and could be ascertained by any designer by playing the games in question, given a solid understanding of game design and development and/or attending a public talk by one of the Club Penguin officers, such as Lane Merrifield’s keynote at the Austin Game Conference.
All opinions expressed herein are my own and in no way reflect the opinions of Club Penguin, The Walt Disney Company or the developer of the DS title.
All art is either screen captures from public websites or original artwork by Marie Lu commissioned for this talk.

3. Who am I? 42 Entertainment I’ve been a game designer for 22+ years
To provide some context, here are a few of the
places where I’ve been privileged to work

4. Club Penguin DS: EPF Postmortem
Challenges
Wins
Key Take-Away Points
This talk is structured into three parts
Challenges
Wins
Take-Aways

5. Challenges 1. Buy-in from Club Penguin creators
Platinum standards for IP
Marketing support
Remain within their Canon
Could not compete with CP – had to be an adjunct experience

6. Challenges 2. First external use of intellectual property (IP)
Wary IP holder
High risk

7. Challenges 3. Three Stakeholders = Triangle of Pain Rights Holder
Publisher
Developer
Deliver on Contract
Return On Investment
Dilution of Brand
Rights Holder: Purity of Vision; Publisher: Maximize Revenue; Developer: Time to Market
Number of revisions
Getting dev to grok IP
Driving dev to standards of IP holder
Educating publisher about IP holder issues
IP holder timing contrary to typical publisher DS title timelines; Kids don’t get the concept of “in 6 months” – “Are we there yet??” 7

8. Challenges 4. Very devoted fan base
Must remain utterly true to IP; can’t change the world or the rules
Will reject item that doesn’t adhere to IP – See Lord of the Rings movies

9. Challenges 5. DS platform game
Personal device vs. home computer; very different experience for players
Limited connectivity for a game that’s been completely connected
Limited memory & disk size – can’t recreate the entire world
Needs both cooperative and competitive play as per CP play
Much smaller screen real estate – couldn’t just port content
Needs original content to be compelling
Needs replayability for value
Needs to feed back into Online game in some way – for instance, earn in-CP world coins
Needs multiplayer ability but can’t achieve the numbers as per online
Limited downloadability – put restraints on what we could pull off, especially in terms of longevity/replayability
Finally, the need as a designer to distill out the very purest essence of the IP in order to deliver the same emotional experience.

10. Wins 1. Support from Club Penguin
Incredibly helpful – often not the case – though standards very high
Style Guide, etc.- Guaranteed title would have the look and feel players demand
Reduced need for outside art resources

11. Wins 2. Huge potential audience
CP is the WoW of kids’ titles – a hit would be huge
VERY high IP awareness – try finding a parent of an 8 year old who isn’t familiar with it. 
Riffing off CP style – Get Smart style adventure and conceits – made for a fun title to work on

12. Key Take-Away Points Build a full Partnership with IP holder
Depart from the IP Canon at your Peril
Create a player-centric authentic feeling game
Distill the key experiences of the original game, take advantage of the strengths of the new platform to create a naturally complementary adjunct experience

13. Q & A

14. Thank You!