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 and Apple App Stores. 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.
Park of Monster is a merge game, which requires players to combine three objects to create another object. The overall aim of the game is to create a village of your monsters, but there are many levels and side missions during that process. The appearance of the game and the subject of monsters would undoubtedly appeal to younger players, but the complexity would quickly lead to frustration and abandonment of the game.
Merge games are notoriously addictive as there is always something else to do and another development to make. There are so many different aspects of this game that it seems difficult to see whether you could ever be finished: collecting monsters and evolving them, treasures, unions, expanding your lands, battling other players, and the list goes on. There are several incentives here but I believe these would all be too complicated for children to follow, especially since there is no guidance within the game as to which step to take next.
Park of Monster has over 75k ratings in the Google Play Store. The reviews I read all appeared to be written by adults who have spent a lot of time playing. None of the reviews I observed gave the impression of being written by children.
Privacy:
Users are asked to agree to the privacy policy upon launching the game. To access the game, players can log in with Facebook or play as a guest. If playing as a Guest, an account name and password are generated. The privacy policy has a standard clause relating to children: “These Services do not address anyone under the age of 13. I do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13.” It goes on to state that it will endeavor to delete any data collected from children under 13 and asks parents to contact them to ask them for this.
Screenshots of Park of Monster
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.
