"Leave our kids alone!": Exploring Concerns Reported by Parents in 1-star Reviews

Children are playing games from a young age and, despite their best efforts, parents often lack the support to fully understand what their children are playing. Ratings systems like PEGI are designed to allow informed parental decisions, but it is currently largely unknown if they capture what parents care about. In this study, we analysed 821 1-star reviews of 40 top-grossing mobile games on the Google Play store focused on parental concerns. We used content analysis to identify the key concerns that parents were expressing with regards to the games their children were playing. The reviews found that parents often reported technical issues, issues surrounding in-game purchases and concerns around player-to-player interaction. This research has implications for the way games are sold to parents and the way children play games, as well as presenting some suggestions for future research and innovation in this area.