Welcome to Pixalate’s CTV & Mobile App Manual Reviews According to COPPA, a series containing the detailed factors the Trust & Safety Advisory Board educators used to assess an app’s child-directedness.
The educators manually review thousands of mobile apps available in the Google Play & Apple App Stores as well as connected TV (CTV) apps from the Roku Channel Store and Amazon Fire TV App Store using the COPPA Rule factors shown below & make those results available to the public at ratings.pixalate.com.
This post takes a look at a game which is available from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Our reviewer discusses how the subjective factors set forth in the COPPA Rule apply to the app and factor into the reviewer's determination as to whether the app is child-directed or general audience (i.e., it is not targeting children).
The teacher will indicate the factors they relied upon in their assessment using the 10 factors shown below that reflect the 10 child-directed factors in the COPPA Rule.
My Little Princess Fairy Games is a dollhouse-type game that allows children to interact with the scenes and characters in their own creative way. This particular app is set in a magical forest filled with fairies. Players can move around the fairies, as well as kings, queens, princes, and princesses. These characters can interact with one another and with the many woodland creatures that are around the forest. They live in cozy tree houses with swaying hammock beds. Just like with real dolls, changing clothes and dressing up is a large part of this virtual dollhouse as well. There are numerous outfits and hairstyles for both the fairies and the royal family.
This app can link to other My Town Princess Games, such as “My Little Princess Castle Game” or “My Little Princess Store Game.” There are many scenes that can only be accessed if these other games are downloaded. This does cause quite a bit of in-app advertising and prompts to download these other games.
Visually, this app is quite appealing to children. The fairy princess style of the characters and the treehouse setting would catch the eye of most toddlers and younger elementary-aged kids. The characters, even the adults, are quite child-like with simple facial features that can be found repeated across the other characters. The forest setting is whimsical and dreamlike, further drawing in children.
While the characters are moved and controlled by the player, not animated, there are other small animations throughout the app. Players can flip switches and push buttons that control a wide variety of animations, such as turning on a waterfall or a baby owl hatching from an egg. Holding onto many objects results in some type of animation, such as a broom sweeping or ladling soup into a bowl.
There is no written language within the app, allowing even young children the ability to play with and interact with the game.
Renaissance Fair-style music plays in the background of the home screen, giving an upbeat feel to the forest setting. Once the player is inside the forest, birds and other forest sounds can be heard. There are also sound effects that accompany some of the items that can be interacted with in the scenes. For example, doorbells ringing and crackling fires to cook on.
The start screen displays numerous advertisements for other games by the same developer. Clicking on any of the ads prompts a “Grown-ups only” screen asking for a year of birth before linking to the app store to download these games. These ads also pop up throughout the game, as many of the “doors” are actually transitions to other My Town games.
There are occasional video ads when moving between scenes within the app. There is also an opportunity to watch video ads to unlock additional characters, clothing, and other items to use in the game. The video ads are all child-directed, with most being for familiar children’s items like Legos and Lunchables.
This app is rated 4+ in the Apple App Store, E in the US Google Play Stores, and PEGI 3 in the European Google Play Stores. The Google Play app description mentions, “My Town Studio creates games for 4-9-year-old kids and older but this cool game for girls is suitable for all ages!” The Apple App Store description slightly differs by saying, “We create games for 5-year-old kids and older as this game for girls is suitable for all ages! It is highly recommended especially for 4-12 years old as that is the age at kids can learn a lot of new things!” While the age ranges might differ slightly between the two app stores, it is clear that they are both child-directed and mention “for girls” and “for kids” in numerous places in the descriptions.
The child-directed nature of this app is reflected in the reviews. Many of the reviews seem to be written by children, as well as reviews written by parents about their children playing the game. Children as young as three and as old as twelve seem to be playing this game.
Privacy
According to the privacy policy, which was last updated on September 21, 2023, My Town Games Ltd states that they “acknowledge that our games are meant for young children” and that they are in compliance with COPPA regulations. They indicate that “the app does not actively collect any information from children” and they only collect operational information that is not identifiable. Additionally, the developers indicate that any third parties that they work with also are restricted from tracking users and are only collecting non-identifiable information for operational purposes. They also indicate that their advertisers are not engaged in behavioral advertising or tracking and that they have humans reviewing the ads to ensure that they are kid-safe.
Find Pixalate's full catalogue of reviews in our CTV and Mobile App Review Page
Screenshots of My Little Princess Fairy Games
Pixalate’s Trust and Safety Advisory Board was created to bring in individuals with experience using child-directed apps in the classroom to review and assess which apps are child-directed. This manual review process serves to quality check Pixalate’s automated review process. See our full methodology for more information.
Disclaimer
This blog post published by Pixalate is available for informational purposes only and is not considered legal advice. By viewing this blog post, the reader understands and agrees that there is no attorney-client relationship between the reader and the blog publisher. The blog should not be used as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in the applicable jurisdiction(s), and readers are urged to consult their own legal counsel on any specific legal questions concerning any specific situation. The content of this blog post reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees; and this blog post is not intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but instead, to report findings pertaining to mobile and Connected TV (CTV) apps.
