Welcome to the Time Capsule, a column where we interview community members about their experiences and predictions for the future! Eventually, we will go through all the editions and see if their predictions were correct. This time, we will interview some of the most experienced recruiters in Club Penguin Armies.
Designed by Master DS
In the latest issue of Time Capsule, we directed our spotlight towards the CPA Army Board. However, for today’s feature, we are shifting our focus from leaders to the cream of the crop within their respective armies. Recruiters are the lifeblood of the community, and anyone successful in this field is a valuable asset to their army. Legends Cup XIII was their time to shine, and with the “September drop” looming on the horizon, their efforts might be the crucial factor in preventing major armies from falling to small/medium status.
The future of recruiting is a frequent topic of discussion within the community. Increasing limitations, initially on the CPPS’, then on Discord itself are making inviting new people progressively harder every month. The recruiters, that we had a pleasure to talk with today, provide their perspective on recruiting nowadays, as well as provide share some predictions for the road ahead.
Welcome to the Time Capsule! Can you introduce yourself?
Aurora, Water Vikings 2ic: I’m Aurora and I’m currently WV 2ic. Before WV, I was ACP 4ic and was in ACP for 2 years.
Cre3py, Penguins of Madagascar Leader: –
Gianna, Rebel Penguin Federation 3ic: hi i’m gianna and i’m apart of the hcom team in rpf 🙂
NIKO, Help Force 4ic: Hello hello! Im NIKO. Im a staff member in HF and i love cookies 😛
Ugly, Army of Club Penguin 4ic: I’m a 4th in command Major General for ACP, I’ve been with ACP for approximetly 2 months. I’m also serving for CPA as a reporter, a Top Ten Committee member, and moderator for CP Army Battleground.
Ratty_rebornm People’s Imperial Confederation Veteran: I like to do claymation and watch old club penguin content. I’m from pic. I used to be a mod there aka the sergeant. I joined in 2020
When did you first start recruiting?
Aurora: I started recruiting March 2020 to get staff since I was so close. I just had to complete the recruiting test.
Cre3py: cant remember
Gianna: i wanna say i first started recruiting as a troop – maybe 2ish months after first joining rpf. in our community we offer something called seasonal roles (which can be retrieved by getting a certain amount of recruits each month) and at the time, they always motivated me to recruit so i could collect them all.
NIKO: Well, I joined HF on December 3rd, 2020. I started recruiting that year because I wanted to achieve Gamer of The Week so badly, but I was new and not very professional, so yeah…
Ratty_reborn: To start I first started to recruit in about 2022ish And started CPA on 2020
Ugly: I started recruiting I believe around my time in Aliens back in 2020, when we used the methods of getting in groups in Club Penguin Online and spam lines to join the army.
Is there anything you really like about recruiting or is it only a monotonous chore for you?
Aurora: I like getting to bring people into the army and grow the community. It’s a way I can contribute to making the army better.
Cre3py: its a chore but i when i did it i got it done
Gianna: from my experience, recruiting has always been a fun but sometimes tough time. of course there’s people who aren’t exactly interested, but when they are, it’s a good feeling knowing that people are enjoying a community that they found because of you.
NIKO: Well, I don’t see recruiting as a chore. It’s more fun than you think! I love recruiting because when I recruit, I become more and more popular among Help Force Army members, and of course, I take part in my army’s growth. So I am becoming a valuable member of my army.
Ratty_reborn: At first recruiting was pretty fun due to the many interactions I would get upon advertising. However towards the later years less and less people would join and it would become a chore until I just quit all together
Ugly: It definitely feels for me just getting straight to the point of just trying to get someone in your army but sometimes you meet with super nice people and get into very pleasant conversations that you get excited they are part of your army, though sometimes as well you get into really weird conversations that make recruiting just more difficult and annoying.
Can you describe your favourite or most effective recruiting method?
Aurora: I’ve always liked discord recruiting because you can get a lot of people quickly. Other methods may be less efficient unless you’re great at communication. I’m definitely not the best at that so discord recruiting lets me improve on my social skills too.
Cre3py: thats classified and is my secret
Gianna: my favorite, and i’d say most effective recruiting method, has always been in-game recruiting. it’s a nice way to invite people to a community, especially since you already know that they share the same interests in club penguin as you.
NIKO: Hmmm, my favourite way of recruiting… good question. I know the people I DM won’t respond immediately, so I DM a lot, and I do mean a lot, of members, and then I play the waiting game; I wait for them to respond and then slowly collect them.
Ratty_reborn: The most effective strat to recruiting would be to advertise in camp servers. Not only do they allow advertising but if you post the ads after cast reveal, many will flock over to the army.
Ugly: I usually just try to strike a conversation by saying “Hi, how are you?” or something like that. You definitely don’t want to sound like a bot when you a recruiting especially in Discord.
Many armies assert that recruiting has become more challenging over time. What are some current difficulties you face that were not present when you first began recruiting?
Aurora: If you’re discord recruiting, it is very likely you’ll get a captcha if you recruit enough. Messages are more likely to also be labeled as spam so it might be harder to recruit as many people. Club Penguin Rewritten had a pretty large playerbase and you could get people to join that actually would be active. It’s much harder to get people interested in armies when they’ve potentially never heard of the game.
Cre3py: the more you recruit the more boring it gets
Gianna: i’d say the biggest difficulty with recruiting at the moment is how dry and inactive some cpps are. for example, unless there’s a party happening on a certain site, a lot of people just don’t bother to log on because there’s not much to do. this makes recruiting a lot tougher because of the lack of people that you may run into.
NIKO: The main problems with recruiting nowadays may be that there’s a good chance people won’t respond, you might get reported, and you might lose your account. I personally do not face any difficulties now that were not present in the past. It’s probably because I’ve been recruiting more carefully since I know the risks and have a lot of experience in recruiting.
Ratty_reborn: Problem is Is that not many people stay after they join, either because they think the website is an IP logger, or that no one plays it, or that it’s silly
Ugly: I believe as well recruiting has become way more difficult than it used to be, especially given the new added features of Discord, as now any new dms dont pop up as notifications but only in Message Requests, which makes it more rare to even get a reply back whether it is accepting or declining. Or getting hit with the classic “You’ve sent a lot of dms at once” or the captcha popup for every DM.. etc.
How do you envision recruiting a year from now? Will it still be possible, what can be some new challenges?
Aurora: It’ll still be as difficult if New Club Penguin is still the only big CPPS. It’ll still be possible depending on what restrictions there are. We may have to adapt to using other platforms to recruit with large user bases. That might be hard for some people.
Cre3py: people grow older and more stubborn so it will be more of a challange to recruit
Gianna: i think that overtime, recruiting will definitely still be a thing that helps armies grow. however, i don’t necessarily think that it’ll remain as effective as it’s been, just because club penguin isn’t as popular and exciting as it used to be (in my opinion at least).
NIKO: I think recruiting a year from now will be more massive than ever! As armies grow even bigger, more and more servers will be used for recruiting. But there may be some bigger threats too, like getting reported, getting kicked from servers, and losing your account, since people today already know the threats that come from DM advertising and clicking on some links.
Ratty_reborn: Recruiting will probably be possible in the future, however you would probably have to do the slow way of dm messages or just stick to org/camp servers
Ugly: I think recruiting for armies the current way will be almost impossible in a year or two from now, given Discord would most likely put even more strict rules concerning multiple similar looking dms sent at once. I believe armies will resort in a different way or type of recruiting discovered by some mad genius in the community hopefully soon.
While not all recruiters approach the future with pessimism, it’s evident that some of the most experienced are aware of the obstacles connected to recruiting on Discord. What are your thoughts? Will armies be forced to find a source of recruits other than Discord in the nearby future? Do the challenges mean our player base will only be declining?
More Information
Mchappy is interning at Club Penguin Armies as the Chief Executive Producer. Max held him at gunpoint to finish his biography.