Before I go hands-on with a handful of Apple Arcade games that are getting a month-long infusion of Bluey, those in attendance at this showcase are given a brief introduction by a representative for the company. In it, they talk about how the service is fantastic for children, as every game that’s included in the subscription is devoid of ads and in-app purchases. Behind the rep is a mural of all the different child-friendly characters currently featured across the hundreds of titles available to play such as Sonic the Hedgehog and SpongeBob SquarePants
As I make my way from station to station, I overhear other attendees, some of whom have brought their own children along to see their favorite blue dog featured in Apple Arcade games such as Crossy Road Castle and Disney Coloring World+. On more than one occasion, I hear a parent state that Apple Arcade is the only gaming they allow their child to engage with, expressly because of its lack of in-app purchases and ads.
Apple Arcade has never exclusively been advertised as a child-first platform in its nearly seven years of existence. However, it seems that the subscription might naturally be donning that mantle regardless. While this showcase’s primary goal is to highlight the select few experiences that are doing a Bluey crossover, which starts rolling out Thursday May 21 for a limited time, there are other family-friendly games available to play as well, including Sneaky Sasquatch, which can almost always be found in the top 10 of the service’s most popular titles.
The games featuring Bluey run the gamut of genres. There’s Crossy Road Castle, a platformer that takes you through the animated dog’s house. Puzzle games stitch. and puffies. feature interactive embroidery and sticker sheets, respectively, with the latter unfurling the plot points of specific Bluey episodes as players place puffy stickers in the right order. Disney Coloring World+ is a digital coloring book, allowing kids to shade the cartoon dog in any color they want, including a variety of hues of his namesake. And Suika Game+, Apple Arcade’s version of the fruit-based match game that blew up a few years ago, will feature Bluey-themed backgrounds as players strategically drop various fruits.
The lack of in-app purchases and ads leads to another benefit under the surface of Apple Arcade: limited data tracking. While completing a delightful, embroidered puzzle of Bluey and his family in stitch., I chat with the founder of its development team Lykke Studios, Jakob Lykkegaard. As I fill out the stitches of a canine’s ears, I ask Lykkegaard how the experience has been developing games primarily for this bespoke service, and what kind of insight they have into the playerbase. Lykkegaard explains that they have access to very surface-level information, but that it’s enough to help them understand if a game is doing well or not.
He then goes on to explain that they do allow users to opt in to providing more data for them, which they only use to better determine whether their game is balanced well; have they put too hard a puzzle in early? Are players not getting into a good rhythm of play? However, once the team feels as though their game is balanced, they actually remove that optional data tracking entirely. In a world where it feels as if companies are, more and more, wanting to tether their analytics to every facet of our lives, hearing this from a game developer was certainly refreshing.
As I speak with more parents and other attendees about these benefits of Apple Arcade, it’s clear to me, someone without children of their own, that a concern over predatory practices in games is top of mind for many. The morning after the showcase, a pair of child-advocacy groups filed a complaint against Roblox at the Federal Trade Commission, arguing that the company, which has a market cap of nearly $32 billion, exploits children through its monetization, as well as opening them up to literal predators through its lax chat systems.
This isn’t the first time Roblox has been in hot water for such allegations, nor is Roblox the only platform accused of predatory practices. In late 2022, Fortnite also had a brush with the FTC, in which developer Epic was required to pay over half a billion dollars for two specific issues; utilizing “dark patterns” to trick users into making more in-app purchases, and collecting personal data on players under 13 without parental consent. When the two biggest gaming hubs on the planet have such scrupulous histories, no wonder security is such a big concern.
While safety is the primary consideration in talking with parents in the room, another advantage of Apple Arcade they enjoyed was how the games aren’t buried under a layers menus and logins: play is at the forefront. These games aren’t designed to extract additional money out of its players, or have them claim a litany of various rewards like some of the popular gacha titles that you can also play on your phone. In many ways, opening up a game through Apple Arcade feels like the kind of experience you could get in the earliest days of the iPhone App Store, like Super Monkey Ball and the very first Angry Birds, the latter being a good example of a title that morphed over time from a gameplay-first experience to an endless treadmill of in-app purchases.
Bluey will be appearing in Crossy Road Castle, stitch. and puffies., Disney Coloring World+, and Suika Game+ throughout the summer for a limited time. If you’re a parent who’s looking to kickstart their child’s journey into video games, it certainly seems that Apple Arcade may be the platform for you.
