Parent Lock on a game/app for kids

I've been working on a game/app designed for little kids - most likely age 1-6 or so, but possibly a bit older. I'm planning on putting in a parental lock so that certain features intended for the parents are not accessible to the children when they are using the app unattended.

The dilemma I'm having is how to design such a lock.

The obvious answer is a password, but it feels like that might be overkill. I also don't want to have to deal with a bunch of "I forgot my password" e-mails if I can help it.

I was thinking about maybe asking the user to perform some kind of puzzle or task that is easy for adults but difficult/impossible for small kids?

Any ideas?

 

You're unlikely to get sales to kids that young if their are adult features you have to lock away from them. The game wouldn't pass rating muster either as the ratings are not an either / or thing - such a game would be rated an adult game.

 

I'm not sure why you would say that. There are many apps (on Android at least) that are designed for kids but implement some kind of parental lock. Here are two examples and they are both rated as "Everyone":

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zoodles.kidmode
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.babyturtleapps.sketch

 

I'm talking of this:

http://www.esrb.org/index-js.jsp

The abuses you link to are sales abuses. The actual abuses are supposed to be addressed by COPPA 2.0.

If such abuses are frequent enough parents will switch to Windows Phone once they are repriced to be competitive with Android. Google isn't doing themselves any favors by allowing such predatory behavior, they could easily build an OS wide lock into the Android OS that parents can turn on off.

The links you point out are a good reason why many parents only allow Disney games. Basically such games as in those links are ruining your opportunities and my opportunities to make a living as an independent game publisher.

 

Wait, what? Are we talking about the same thing?

How is implementing a parental lock an abuse or predatory behavior? If anything, that's doing your due diligence as a developer to avoid that. It's preventing children from accessing things that they shouldn't. How is this possibly a bad thing?

 

Look at it this way: if it wasn't undesirable for that to be in a game than why would there need to be a lock against it? And I saw those cartoon elephants in the game's write up - the game isn't targeted at adults, it's targeted at very young children and the developer knowing that puts the ads in there anyway? There needs to be a parental lock put on the game? And so with a game locked against ads how will the developers make money? They did this as a 'safety feature' - to get attention. It's like selling a computer infected with viruses and then allowing the buyer to turn on a lock to stop the viruses from infecting files.

No, who are you trying to kid?

 

I think the answer is far simpler than your cynicism would have you believe:

• You develop an app designed for kids.
• But of course, you're selling the app to the parents.
• You know that free-to-play is more and more the only way to make money, so you decide to monetize the app by selling content via In-App Purchases. You don't want the kids making In-App Purchases without parental consent. Only the parents should be able to decide to make those purchases. So you put purchases behind a parental lock.
• Maybe you also allow the parent to edit/delete content or change certain settings about what they do and don't want their kids to be able to do in the app. You also put those features behind a parental lock because you don't want kids messing with that stuff.
• You consider also monetizing via ads, but only while a parent is using some of the parent-only features. So you only display ads when the parent lock is off.

I see no malicious or predatory behavior in that.

Perhaps you and I just see the world in a very different light.

 

Saw this in the asset store for free: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/13308

 

Thanks!

That looks interesting, but it seems like it would only keep out toddlers. My 4 year old could easily swipe with 2 fingers.

Also, didn't know about Apple's requirement. I'll have to look into that a little more.

 

I just found this article which shows several ways that parental gates are implemented:

http://www.dreambotstudios.com/parent-gate-rejection/