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Comment by apapli | Hacker News Reader

Having a 4 year old son I am the first person to put my hand up and say I absolutely HATE ads and general in-app purchases for games that he likes to play on my iPhone. In some cases the way these are implemented it is almost akin to being in a casino which is not a skill I really want my son picking up (watch this ad to see what prize you can WIN etc).

I welcome Sega's announcement and will be delighted to hand over $1.99 to disable all ads - I know their games are of a known quality, and will come without suprise violence included etc.

By way of example I have one simple game he loves to play that randomly brings up images of a guy holding a girl in a headlock with a gun pointed at her head.... and the same ad comes up repeatedly. I can't even disable it via an in-app purchase (trust me, I tried).

As an aside, I'd welcome some suggestions of games he can play, and if anyone reading this is a game developer I'll be happy to provide any imnput to something you are dreaming up.

EDITS: just for clarity of reading

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Set up a DNS proxy, point your son's iPad at it, tail the log and then blacklist domains that serve these ads.

Bonus, this can also be used to remove YouTube and other kinds of ads as well as all the phone-home "analytics" if that's your thing.

  -- Edit --

Some options:

http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html + ToDo's via Google

https://github.com/apankrat/dnswhisperer or more generally https://github.com/search?utf8=&q=ad+blocking+dns

There are also 3rd party services that provide this function. They have obvious privacy issues, but for a kid's iPad it might be an option.

+1 for Pi-Hole for this sort of thing. Comes with pre-built lists of sites, and has a nice admin ui to handle blocks/allows.

Also, the kid and father could pihole the shait out of it. I know i really want to do it.

Q: About ad blocking dns projects in general, what's the downside ? (beside jeopardizing the future of the internets)

Making people who have passive ad income upset enough to tell people not to use it but in a non confrontational way

The same downside as adblockers: some websites will break or block you.

Wow, thanks!

The thing you want for this is called Privoxy. There are scripts out there to convert e.g. Easylist to Privoxy format. It should take less than an hour to get it all going.

Another alternative is buy him a Nintendo handheld instead of an iPad. No ads, no dodgy content, quality games.

what if you dont like Nintendo games ?

The games are for a young child. It is quite unlikely that Nintendo makes a game that is unsuitable for or disliked by people of that age. They are the one console maker who focuses on gameplay experience instead of graphics technology.

Then don't buy a Nintendo handheld...?

proxy him and tail the logs?

Get a PSVita instead it's a ridiculously underrated handheld and will be going cheap these days.

But as it was a young kid we're talking about I think it's safe to say there will be something on Nintendo that they're into.

My main point was more just you really do get what you pay for and if these things on iPads bother you then please vote with your wallets and buy products from companies that actually care about quality of their software.

There are tons of 3rd party games for the 3DS. If you can't find games you want to play on it, then you're not looking.

The console is supposedly for the kid, not you. I've never met a 4-year-old who didn't like Nintendo games.

Does not really answer my question. I don't feel that culturally these games bring much on the table. Why do you have to make 4-years old play games made for 4-years old? When I was 5 I wanted to play the games my 15 years old brother was playing.

My daughter is six and super-happy with the Nintendo DS. I have a 3DS that she also plays on sometimes. When she was 4, we bought one of those child-hardened Kindles and enrolled her in Amazon Freetime; she loved it.

Exactly the same progression with my five year-old. He still uses his hardened Kindle with Freetime, but for most gaming, really likes his DS I restored from a broken state on the cheap.

My 3.5 year old loves Monument Valley. It's not something I thought he would have been capable of playing - and he does sometimes "need some help to win" - but he downloaded it himself on Kindle Fire for Kids Unlimited and just started playing it.

The Kids Unlimited thing has been great. All the apps are included in the monthly price, there's no ads, no in-app purchases, and all the games and apps are vetted to be child-safe. It's amazing to watch him download stuff and figure out how to play it without any help.

Thanks for making me aware of it. I've been looking for something to get my 6-year-old nephew that can be set up to be kid safe, and I hadn't really thought about the Fire tablets until now. How's their durability?

Rock solid. We've have had 2 fire 7's in our house for 1.5 years, in the hands of a now 8 and 6 year old and no issues. Things are covered in gunk (like how they manage the touch screen is beyond me), and they keep going.

I don't use unlimited, I've side loaded play store, set age range, enabled full parental controls on play store and on the tablet themselves... They have full control, but web is blocked etc. Play store is great, tells them they need to uninstall things to install the next game. They don't need my interaction to install X or Y now.

They did manage to download an app that let them have full access to unfiltered youtube, but we caught that pretty quick. YouTube kids is great as well.

Sounds great. Thanks for taking the time to answer, I appreciate it!

The durability has been really good. We've just got a regular Kindle Fire with a Kids profile on it; it's taken a real beating and shown no issues.

The Kids Edition of the tablet is more expensive, but comes with a very rugged case and a "If they break it, we'll replace it. No questions asked" guarantee for the first couple of years.

That sounds like an ideal warranty for a young child's electronics. Thanks for responding.

just mentioning this but: I broke normal kindles twice within a year or so, and got them replaced with no questions asked.

Amazon's customer service is beyond legendary.

> Having a 4 year old son

> games that he likes to play on my iPhone

Dude those thing are psychological traps aimed to break a 30yo-something will, what do you think they'll do to a 4yo?

This is important for parents to note. Teach your child about computing on a RaspPi where they'll actually learn real computing and not a walled device with a download button. I know they're convenient at a restaurant...etc, but they rigidly enforce instant gratification without much learning involved. I guess though it isn't super different than a Nintendo if taken with moderation, but I'd argue most of the games are less complicated in scope...more like slot machines than something with an engaging story and strategy. They also have an infinite amount of games at their fingertips instead of I'm bored with "x", time to go play.

Well I think some gaming is okish, with moderation and even as a time-off for parents, but at that age socializing should be the primary activity, and that includes making a scene in public and facing the consequences.

That said there are plenty games suitable for children that aren't manipulative iap-infested swamps. sure you have to pay those, but destroying reward centers of kids that age isn't worth the saving from freemiums.

Agreed

Welcome to parenthood. You even sound like the parents of the 80s and 90s now.

Before that it was too much TV.

Before that it was too much radio.

In Victorian times it was reading too many books.

Kids of today will always be kids of today, doing the things that they do instead of the things that you nostalgically remember doing. Even Socrates noted that.

Too much TV was and is a real problem.

I wasn't around for "too much radio". Sounds suspect. There wasn't that much programming available.

Too many books? Pfft.

People didn't use to consider it edifying to read any book whatever, no matter how unchallenging and hackneyed. Now adults pat themselves on the back for finishing a young adult novel that's 100 pages long.

“the girl who sits for hours poring over a novel to the damage of her eyes, her brain, and her general nervous system, is guilty of a lesser fault of the nature of suicide.”

"[novel reading is] one of the most pernicious habits to which a young lady can be devoted. When the habit is once thoroughly fixed, it becomes as inveterate as the use of liquor or opium.”

"I have seen two poor disconsolate parents drop into premature graves, miserable victims to their daughters' dishonour, and the peace of several relative families wounded, never to be healed again in this world. 'And was novel-reading the cause of this? inquires some gentle fair one... I answer yes!"

"Girls are not apt to understand the evils of novel-reading, and may think it is only because mothers have outlived their days of romance that they object to their daughters enjoying such sentimental reading; but the wise mother understands the effects of sensational reading upon the physical organization, and wishes to protect her daughter from the evils thus produced... Romance-reading by young girls will, by this excitement of the bodily organs, tend to create their premature development, and the child becomes physically a woman months, or even years, before she should."

- various sources

The medium changes, the message stays the same.

* One should be careful to avoid the trap of using fiction as an escape from reality.

* One's behavior can be influenced by the stories.

* Stories allow one to experience another's life vicariously. Make sure they are equipped to understand and handle the experiences and pains of that life.

All of those are examples of the same fundamental, where children can become monofocused on one domain and suffer long term for lack of broad exposure to experiences.

They are also easy traps - from the 18th century to the 21st century, if your kid is wrapped up in books or a phone you don't have to worry about who they are interacting with, what they are doing outside, if they are in danger or putting others in danger - they stay home and are low maintenance.

Problem is, low maintenance doesn't produce robust human beings.

People keep saying that (shortly after becoming parents), and yet the kids keep turning out alright.

I grew up like that and boy did it ruin my life! Living on a farm 10 miles from the nearest road, playing concerts, traveling, and working remotely to finance it all. It's a shame I was so wrapped up in my books and computers and video games as a kid because I could have led a normal life in a cubicle like everyone else.

I have to agree heavily and with your previous parent comment. Bad media, content, entertainment, recreational activities does not produce bad children.

I'm not completely certain but I'm fairly positive having your child interact with the bad people or hanging around the wrong types of friends (etc) far trumps any "bad forms of media".

Never before have there been people watching the analytics and in real-time figuring out how to make their stuff more addictive.

I am also down with pointing out that the world has changed less than people think and do it quite often myself, but on the other hand, there are some real differences between mobile games and television, or even console games of the past. I do not keep my kids entirely off the tablets, but I do, without them really realizing it, keep them well away from the Skinner boxes. I'd rather just pay to buy something.

When they are older, I will have a discussion with them about this. But discussing how they work and why they are dangerous and why you need to stay away from them requires multiple concepts a 6-year-old is not yet able to deal with. (Children are not just little adults.)

We're in a thread talking about old consoles. It's easy to forget that the majority of games on any console were awful shovelware (I'm sure many of us have the experience of booting up an old, fondly remembered game only to slowly realize it's crap).

This has actually never happened to me. I replay the games I played as a kid about every two years and they are always great. The game I reply the most are Kid Chameleon for Sega 16bit and Wonderboy in Dragon's trap for Sega 8-bit.

I might look into this but I cannot stand ads and I'm inapt at using mobile phones, so probably not.

All games I remember good still are, my MAJOR gripe is that post 1995 most games got standardized as to what left/right clicks are for and how movement control is performed (wasd+shift/space) so going to play game before or around that timeline with those clunky ux is a major mental drain

i.e. Fragile Allegiances, Magic Carpet, Shogun Total War are all enticing but I cannot play without getting frustrated.

Honorable mention to Master of Magic, which is completely workable.

Mobile wise since Dwarf Fortress got a mobile skin I couldn't be happier.

The few games I still like to play from my Atari 5200 days are Missile Command, Gyruss, Frogger, and Pac Man. All of them have been ported/updated but they are still fun in their original incarnation under emulation.

From my Sega Genesis days: Streets of Rage, all of the Sonic games, and the Mortal Kombat series are still pretty fun.

I'm not saying that there were no good old games. What I'm saying is they benefit from the same effect as old movies and books, where the best remembered and preserved titles are good ones and the crap is mostly forgotten about, leading to an unrealistic perspective on how relatively good or bad the medium writ large used to be. For every Super Mario Brothers 3 there's a Mystery of Atlantis.

Most ads don't work without a connection, so for games that allow it, I just disable Wifi on my son's iPad. Works great for e.g. Zombie Tsunami, it's actually a way better experience without wifi.

Ha. Awesome idea. I'll check it out!

This hack works. I wish there was way to disable internet for some apps. I am sure that's possible on android.

Not without rooting it isn't. I don't think even Android 7.0 has an option to disable internet access on per-app basis - you can disable most permissions, but accessing the internet does not require a special permission(there used to be an INTERNET permission but it has been removed by Google)

>(there used to be an INTERNET permission but it has been removed by Google)

Can't say I'm too surprised by this development. I am surprised they were magnanimous enough to give it in the first place.

It was likely implemented before google took over android.

It seems unlikely, given that the permissions system (if we're talking being able to approve certain permissions only, per app) only came in a relatively recent version of Android (definitely >3).

There's a way. A firewall, that work as a local VPN. You don't need to root your Android. I use NetGuard. https://www.netguard.me

It's open source.

I wonder if this local vpn trick would work on iOS.

Does iOS support VPNs? I've never used an iDevice before.

It does.

They'd have a hard time selling millions of them to corporate drones "in the enterprise" if it didn't. This and Exchange support are basically unavoidable for those kinds of sales.

Joking aside, iOS has supported VPN connections since as long ago as iPhone OS (feels weird calling it that now) 4 I think?

Haven't tried if it works but my android version (6.0.1) seems to have an option for disabling internet for specific apps. Note that I haven't rooted (yet). Going to Settings -> Data Usage -> Settings will show me a list of apps and I can chose between following four options Allow, Forbidden, Wi-Fi only and Data only.

It works.

Which manufacturer? ASUS?

My Motorola Moto G4 Play has Android 6.0.1 too and the only option present is to restrict background data.

OnePlus (3T) for me. (on the Data Usage page it was the small dots menu button in the top right hand corner.)

I also have a G4 Play. I recommend installing LineageOS on it, rooting it, and installing AFWall, which allows setting app-granular networking permissions for WiFi, VPN, and cellular.

Mine is a OnePlus 2 device.

Thanks, didn't know that. For other people the path was Settings -> Data Usage -> Data Usage Control for me.

Apps still need to add the INTERNET permission to work. It's just now it's one of those that are automatically granted without action from the user. I suppose there could be some hack to disable it for certain apps though.

I agree. I wish there was a way of disabling internet on a per-app basis. The iPhone has this for mobile data, but not for wifi.

Even if it was a passive permission - i.e. you had to specifically go into settings and disable it, rather than being asked for each app - I'd be fine with that.

search play store for "no root firewall"

enjoy

Huawei's EMUI can do this. You can enable and disable WiFi, cellular data and even roaming on a per app basis as well.

So at least Huawei did something good with their own UI.

ISTR that's coming in iOS 11.

The ads are insane. Want to save your progress (even in games with built in save mechanics in the original cart)? You have to watch an ad. Want to progress to the next level? Watch an ad. Want to progress past an in-level save point? Watch an ad.

It completely removes the player from the game and makes it tedious to play. I mean, I guess I'm happy they are releasing these at all, but they need to come up with a better way to serve ads that doesn't defeat the purpose of the game itself (quick bouts of fun).

Am I reading the discussion wrong or do they offer you a two-dollar no-ads option? Because for that price it seems like a no-brainer.

Until I see reports that it truly is "no ads" in the purchased version, I'll hold off. I've been burned too many times by the "pay full price to remove ads" only to get more ads.

I downloaded Sonic the Hedgehog this past weekend. My 3-year-old son was really intrigued as he watched me play. Within a few minutes, he wanted to play. The mechanics of a the game are a little difficult for him, however, the ads made the game almost unplayable for him. "Finding the 'X'" (to exit out of an ad) is now a mini-game within a game.

That said, SEGA got $1.99 out of me really quickly. $2 is a killer deal for sense of nostalgia, let alone a fine video game.

My son was talking about Sonic the Hedgehog at the breakfast table the next morning.

My son is 5 and I let him play Sonic on an emulator. He was hooked almost immediately.

You should definitely report the game to Apple. Games have ratings, and a guy holding a girl in a headlock with a gun pointed to her head is depiction of violence and likely not 4+ age friendly.

Apple are the only people that can force the game to change it's ad inventory.

I've done that before, and no-one cares.

The app had an age rating of 4+, it kept showing alcohol ads.

I told Apple, who did nothing, I told the app maker who did nothing, and I reported it to the UK regulator who told me the ad network was using demographics, not app age ratings, to deliver ads. Since the phone owner had a credit card the ad network "knew" the person using the phone was over 18.

I pointed out as politely as I could how fucking stupid that was, and the regulator is now "working with" the industry to try to fix this.

Excuse me if I sound intolerant but, do kids really need to play mobile games? I don't understand why most parents are happy to hand over an iPhone to their kid, then complain that their games are constantly trying to syphon money. Just find something else to keep them distracted then, get a second hand gameboy for example.

Nope they dont. In fact it has shown to slow their development (social, mechanical, physical, speech).

Kids should be playing in the real world for a long time before they are exposed to the virtual world.

But so often parents make these decisions based on nostaliga ("Oh look my 3 y/o son is playing Zelda just like I did when I was a kid")

I don't have any suggestion for an iPhone. But Humble Bundle has had fantastic ad-free bundles of games, where you pay what you want.

Maybe get your four year old a cheap Android phone or tablet and some Humble Bundled games? Then you won't have ads, and if your child breaks the device, at least it wasn't your iPhone.

Looks good. Definitely something to consider. I agree it would be nice to have an alternative to my iPhone, I fear it is only a matter of time before we have lots of tears and a broken screen.... :)

For a game suggestion, I'll mention "Re-Volt Classic" [1]. It's a very high quality port of an old PC game. It runs beautifully on today's mobile devices, and the game is really well made IMO. Be careful not to get Re-Volt 2/3/etc., they're awful modern micro-transaction clones.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1OH4ZKr1iY

Awesome suggestion, video looks great, will be buying it soon. Thanks :)

Oh wow, thanks for this, I loved revolt on the PS1 as a kid (that menu music tho <3) and have played the far superior PC version on and off over the years since.

Some years back my wife and I decided to write a series of apps for toddlers that had zero ads, and absolutely no annoying sounds or music. We wanted to make something your kid could play quietly, without any help. The iPhone/iPad app version has been down for a while since we didn't profit enough off of it to continue paying the $100 annual apple developer fee. The Amazon version is still up if you want to see what we had in mind. It's called "Quiet Toddler Games for Tablets" when you search under Apps. I still like the concept, it's too bad that it didn't really pick up.

Maybe set up a Pi-hole at home and filter your network ad traffic, specifically for your kids devices?

Thanks foir the suggestion. He just uses my iPhone which I lock, but if disabling wifi doesn't work I'll try this approach instead.

Hmm, I installed sonic on Android, first screen that popped up before getting into the game was "give money to get rid of ads". So maybe install it and pay for it :)

That's funny. I remember not being allowed to go to Chuck E Cheese's or play carnival games that offered prizes for the same reason, parents didn't want priming for casino visiting. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I often wonder if this kind of extreme parenting is more or less likely to result in the negative consequences the parents are trying to avoid.

One could hypothesize that, having never learned to enjoy a pleasure in moderation, a person might be more vulnerable to going off the rails with it later on.

Anecdotally, the friends I have that are most prone to binging on sugary things are the ones who were never allowed sugar as kids.

Maybe, but having a 4 year old I'm happy to be called a helicopter parent with regards to casino type content.

When he is older, yes I'll need to pull back a bit :)

Would it work to explain to him why casinos are bad?

"Games that are like this (point to app), like casinos, have "random" endings. "Random" means that sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, and if you were to play many many times, and count the number of times you win and the number of times you lose, they would stay at similar levels. For example, you win two times for every one time you lose. But, here's the trick: these games are made so that they trick people, even very smart people, into thinking they win more often than they lose, but they actually don't! These games take over your brain and make you think things that are not true. And if you let them do that, you will lose more often than you win, so overall you will lose and that is bad. So it is best to stay away."

Your kid will also learn about probability!

My kids love The Land of Venn series:

https://itunes.apple.com/at/app-bundle/learn-master-geometri...

Thanks, will check them out :)

Jailbroken iPhones can get FirewallIP[1] which offers Little Snitch functionality where domains and IP addresses can be allowed or denied for each app, triggered by the App's request to access a resource.

Android briefly had WhisperMonitor[2] but that was killed when WhisperSystems was puchased by Twitter.

[1] http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.yllier.firewall7/ [2] http://www.androidauthority.com/worlds-first-true-firewall-f...

If the game can be played offline, just turn off wifi and you can disable cellular data on a per-app basis with settings > cellular > use cellular data for (toggle)

I use this to disable ads and upgrade posts in angry birds, and it works very well.

The in-app purchase says "remove non-SEGA adverts" which sounds like you'll still see ads even after paying, which seems shady to me.

Second, I've got a retro arcade collection on iOS/android that might be a bit harder for the 4yo but has some games he can play. My niece likes "pong" and "duck hunt". Check my website for more info. I'm working on a graphics revamp as well.

I have a second game (on iOS only) that's free called "tic tac blam" that might be easier for them to pick up. I'd appreciate feedback on either one.

Well if it's Sega ads it'll probably just be ads for future free games you can download, or possibly for their console game releases. As long as the frequency is much less, that's might not be too bad, and possibly useful.

Right, but it's still odd since most people would expect all ads to be removed if they pay.

> I'd welcome some suggestions of games he can play,

The BBC have some games under the CBeebies brand.

LEGO have a few which are somewhat enjoyable.

Dogbyte have "blocky highways" (and when he's a bit older "blocky roads").

I use the AdBlock app for iOS, it sets up a dummy VPN that blocks a lot of ad servers. Works pretty well.

https://www.adblockios.com/

It seems to me that Sega pulled an interesting instance of the well-known fallacy "Works for Google, so it will work for us".

(Not sure if there is a short name for this. "Google fallacy"?)

Usually, the fallacy is more along mimicking technical details such as using a commodity hardware server setup or introducing high-scalability technology into early software stacks.

However, seeing the same fallacy applied to ads, at such a large scale, is new to me.

Free games on phones with obnoxious ads is new to you? And you associate it with Google?

On the App store when browsing the various apps with in-app purchases you can get a history of the popular purchases. Needless to say I am quite astonished at how rapidly the in-app purchase price increases. From simple 99 cent purchases to 99 dollars.

The ability to make in-app purchases needs to be turned off by default rather than buried three levels down in iOS

I'd pay 20 quid, it's a huge catalogue (though they probably have extracted most of the revenue already).

Hey, you can lock certain parts of the screen from touch on the iPhone. It locks the phone inside an app and you can define "dead" parts of the screen, really handy.

Thanks, yes I've done that. Works well in keeping him off youtube/my work email etc. The kid lock is great, unfortunately doesn't stop the ads.

it's crazy that a kids mode wouldn't affect ads. in some countries it's illegal to advertise to children, and in many others there's at least strict rules on what you can and cannot advertise to children.

For those with rooted Android phones, AdAway (available from F-Droid) does a good job of blocking in-app ads in my experience.

I've just downloaded a couple of games, and I do have the option to buy for £1.99, an ad free version.

Perhaps you could setup Pihole and blacklist Sega's advertising domains?

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