🐶 Dirt Dog: Health, Safety and Disclosures for Grown-ups
Dirt Dog is a video game. We made it the way we wanted a game for our own preschooler to be: no violence, no strangers, no ads, no purchases inside, spoken guidance, and a break timer. Those are design choices, not promises about what the game will do for your child. How much your child plays, and whether they play at all, is your decision.
What Dirt Dog is, and is not
- It is entertainment. Dirt Dog is a toy, not a curriculum, therapy, or a learning program. It has not been designed with, evaluated by, tested by, or endorsed by any educational, pediatric, psychological or medical professional or body, and it has not been rated by the ESRB, PEGI or any other rating board.
- We make no claims about outcomes. We do not claim, and you should not expect, that Dirt Dog will teach reading, counting, money skills or anything else; improve attention, creativity, coordination, behaviour or mood; prepare a child for school; or be better, safer or healthier for a child than other games, other activities, or no screens at all. Words like "gentle", "kid-sized" and "no monsters" describe the content; they are not health or educational claims. Research on children and games is mixed and still developing; our research note summarises some of it for your information only.
- We cannot know your child. Every child is different. If you have questions about screen use, development, sleep, vision, attention or behaviour, ask your pediatrician or another qualified professional. Nothing we publish is medical, psychological, educational or parenting advice.
- Parent-mode tools are helpers, not guards. The play-time limit, break timer and reading helper are conveniences. A child can close the game and reopen it, the timer resets by day, and any device has its own controls. They do not replace a grown-up's supervision.
Important health warning: photosensitive seizures
A very small percentage of people may experience a seizure when exposed to certain visual images, including flashing lights or patterns that may appear in video games. Even people with no history of seizures or epilepsy may have an undiagnosed condition that can cause these "photosensitive epileptic seizures" while watching video games. Children and teenagers are more likely than adults to experience them.
Seizures may have symptoms such as light-headedness, altered vision, eye or face twitching, jerking or shaking of arms or legs, disorientation, confusion, or momentary loss of awareness, and can cause loss of consciousness or convulsions that can lead to injury from falling or striking nearby objects.
Stop playing immediately and consult a doctor if you or your child experience any of these symptoms. Parents should watch for or ask their children about them. If you or anyone in your family has a history of seizures or epilepsy, consult a doctor before playing.
Dirt Dog avoids rapid flashing by design (day turns to night slowly, the screen flashes softly once when a photo is taken, and lanterns glow rather than blink), but no game can guarantee it will not trigger a sensitive person.
Everyday precautions
These are the standard precautions the video-game industry recommends and we repeat them here:
- Play in a well-lit room, sitting or standing as far from the screen as is comfortable, on the smallest screen that is practical.
- Take a break of 10 to 15 minutes every hour, even if you do not think it is needed. Dirt Dog's break timer defaults to a short session and can be adjusted in parent mode; it is there to help, not to decide for you.
- Do not play when tired or when it is time to sleep. Screens close to bedtime are associated with later and shorter sleep in children; many families stop screens an hour before bed and keep devices out of bedrooms.
- Give eyes a rest: every 20 minutes, look at something about 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Stop if eyes feel tired, dry or sore, or if a headache develops.
- Keep the volume moderate, especially with headphones, and keep headphones off very young ears.
- Hold tablets and phones comfortably and vary posture; stop if hands, wrists, arms, neck or back feel tired or sore.
- Dirt Dog is a 3D world with a moving camera. A few people feel dizziness or motion discomfort in 3D games; stop and rest if that happens.
- Keep devices, chargers and cables away from mouths, water and beds, and follow the device maker's safety instructions.
About screen time
We are not the right people to tell you how much screen time is right for your child. Two widely cited sources of guidance for young children are the American Academy of Pediatrics' media guidance for families (the "5 Cs": child, content, calm, crowding out, communication) and the World Health Organization's 2019 guidelines for children under five, which recommend no more than one hour a day of sedentary screen time for ages 2 to 4, with less being better. Both emphasise that what a child watches or plays, and whether a grown-up is involved, matter as much as the clock. Links are in our research note.
What is in the game (content description)
Cartoon dogs build with blocks on an island. Cartoon animals (birds, squirrels, rabbits, fish, a smiling shark) play simple games with the player. Houses can "wither" and show a sad face until repaired. A polite crew removes buildings placed without a permit and charges a small fine in in-game bones. In Big Dog mode a cartoon banker offers small in-game loans that are repaid from in-game rent. There is no violence, no weapons, no death, no scary imagery, no real money inside the game, no chat, and no strangers. Nothing in the game can be bought with real money.
Online version and connectivity
The version at dirtdogkids.com/play runs in a web browser and can work offline after it loads. It is still a web page: a browser's own features (address bar, other tabs, notifications) are outside our control, and we recommend using "Add to Home Screen" so the game opens on its own, and using the child-safety settings built into your device (for example Guided Access on iPad or Screen Time on iOS) for younger children.
Reporting a problem
If anything in Dirt Dog worries you, upsets your child, or behaves unexpectedly, email dirtdoggame@yahoo.com. A real parent answers, and we fix things.