Game Rating?

[ShyChangling]

Now I know alittle bit about how rating works. E games are those for everyone pg-13/T is for teens and up ectra.

How ever. Cause of the way my brain works I can never truely tell when a game should be a different rating.

Does implying certain trauma happens make a story a different rating depending on what said trauma was?

Like um.. Tales of Series T rated vs Drakengards M rated. How do I know when the T rating starts to drift into an M rating.

And well I guess the best bet is to just ask the community how you rate a game right?

 

[Andar]

no, this is not how it works.

The ratings have a legal base, and there are lists available that specifically state what content belongs to what rating. And that is not something you should ignore, because if you assign a rating and it is wrong then you can get problems.

The problems are
1) the ratings and lists are different for different cultures - for example several european ratings allow for full nudity in a non-sexual way at age 16, but are extremely restrictive on gore and violence, but north american ratings are very restrictive on nudity but have no problems showing blood and gore early. And that doesn't even count the muslimic countries where laws forbid woman to show their face in public, can you even think on what their rating agencies would declare?
2) while the lists are extensive, they are not absolute or complete - sometimes something new can fall between the regular ratings, and that would require a decision on what rating to apply.

So what you should do is to go to the public pages of the rating agency that applies to your country (or to the country that you want to publish in) and read their lists and desctriptions to get their opinion on what goes where.
Then you can decide what part would apply to your game, and as a third step you can ask around here if people would agree to that or not.

 

[ShyChangling]

OH! Thank you for the correction! I will take this to heart then and work from there!

Its a good thing I asked in the first place. This is really helpful

 

[Finnuval]

Pretty much what @Andar said. It's very different based on where you're from and what geographical/cultural market your game comes out in. Check, double check and check again to be sure

 

[Milennin]

Would you let your 7-year old son play this game? No, give it a teen rating.
Would you let your 14-year old son play this game? No, give it an adult rating.

 

[Finnuval]

@Milennin problem with that approach is its to subjective and personal and is based on the culture/country you live in which may not be the market your game is releasing in

 

[Milennin]

@Milennin problem with that approach is its to subjective and personal and is based on the culture/country you live in which may not be the market your game is releasing in

Countries already have different rulings for how their ratings work, and official rating systems are based on subjective views anyhow. You're not going to be able to pick 1 rating system and have it apply correctly to every place your game is going to be up for download, because it's on the internet, and people all over the world have access to it.
Rating on common sense works best, in my opinion.

 

[Ksi]

Common sense for who, though? One person might have conflicting ideas on what they do/do not allow their kids to watch. For example, my mother was a-okay with us watching Grease but not okay with watching Grease 2 though the both of them had sexual innuendos up the wazoo. She also let us watch stuff like Last Unicorn, Labyrinth, Legend and Thundercats, but had issue with us watching cartoon X-men and Biker Mice from Mars. In other words, she was inconsistent with what she thought was okay for us to watch and what wasn't.

That's why national ratings exist - to give a more generalised and thoughtful idea as to what ratings a show or game should be. Sure, it's not the be-all, end-all, but at least you have a general idea that a game rated PG should be okay for your 14 year old to play, while one rated M should not be.

 

[Andar]

common sense will not do, because as I mentioned in my post above there are legal connections to the age-ranking.
And if you mess up those rankings by placing it too low, then that can get you into legal problems.
Does anyone want to risk that on their own "common sense only"?

 

[Milennin]

common sense will not do, because as I mentioned in my post above there are legal connections to the age-ranking.
And if you mess up those rankings by placing it too low, then that can get you into legal problems.
Does anyone want to risk that on their own "common sense only"?

Okay, and they might live on the other side of the planet, only have my screenname to go off of and may have downloaded my game from a place I don't even visit anymore. Good luck to them getting me in problems over a subjective matter over an RPG Maker game of all things, lol.
(Don't remember if I even bothered to put a rating on my first game in the first place.)

 

[woootbm]

And well I guess the best bet is to just ask the community how you rate a game right?

Well, the "proper" way to rate a game would be to submit it to a company like the ESRB or PEGI and let them rate it since those ratings were specifically created by them. And, also, they can come after you if you apply their ratings to your game without their consent. Potentially.

But if you're just posting a free game on these forums and just want to warn folks without having an official rating, that's a different question. Sorry if my answer is incredibly stupid, I'm just making sure what the question actually is. Because the way the question is worded makes me think you believe there's some universal system. When, actually, each rating system is designed by a company. Oftentimes the systems are contradictory, broken, or borderline nonsensical. So asking people who are not from those companies to define their rules is a guessing game, especially when those companies can't seem to understand their own rules.

 

[ShyChangling]

Well, the "proper" way to rate a game would be to submit it to a company like the ESRB or PEGI and let them rate it since those ratings were specifically created by them. And, also, they can come after you if you apply their ratings to your game without their consent. Potentially.

But if you're just posting a free game on these forums and just want to warn folks without having an official rating, that's a different question. Sorry if my answer is incredibly stupid, I'm just making sure what the question actually is. Because the way the question is worded makes me think you believe there's some universal system. When, actually, each rating system is designed by a company. Oftentimes the systems are contradictory, broken, or borderline nonsensical. So asking people who are not from those companies to define their rules is a guessing game, especially when those companies can't seem to understand their own rules.

This is actually really helpful here, thank you. I don't know much of anything about the rating system. And I had posted this question initially because I didn't know how rating worked.

Frankly I could of worded my question much better.

I had been under the assumption that game ratings were a must thing. And yes I did kind of think the rating system was universal.

But frankly down too it I did just want to know a good way to warn people about a games content and thought a game rating was how it worked.

 

[Elissiaro]

The best thing to do to warn people about your content, would be actually warning them about specific things.
Like, i dunno. If your game has blood and gore, or nudity, or drug use. Or violent crimes. (you know beyond the regular off screen rpg murder where noone comments on it and the bodies just turns into loot)

I'm pretty sure the pegi or whatever do that as well as the age rating anyway (dunno about esrb). Yeah I have a european copy of Pokemon Sun here, there's the age rating (7), and then there are little icon for violence.
And eruropean Octopath Traveler has a rating of 12 years with icons for bad language, and sex (presumably offscreen since this doesnt have a way higher rating). I guess the level of violence in octopath doesn't deserve a mention in a game for 12 year olds.

 

[Prescott]

This depends on whether you are giving it an OFFICIAL rating, or if it is just a content warning. To get an official rating, you'll have to either send your game in to the ESRB, PEGI, etc etc and get ratings from there OR go through Steam, who has an automated process at least for the ESRB. You can also choose to not give your game a rating and instead give content warnings. For instance, Doki Doki Literature Club is not rated, but it does have content warnings. The only stipulation of your game not having a rating means that it will not be able to be sold on store shelves, or in some regions. Giving it away for free means you can do whatever you want with it.

It obviously gets a lot more in depth than that, but that's a good summary.

 

[ShyChangling]

Thank you all so much!
I think I'm starting to understand now.

 

[Wavelength]

It's very subjective, but I think intent and direction are a big part of it. Trauma can be presented in a somewhat troubling manner (Teen) or in a truly brutal manner (Mature). Factors like how much focus is put on that trauma, how graphical any physical violence involved in it is, and how realistic the characters and setting are, will all play into what rating it will get.

That's how the ESRB and most similar rating agencies work, though. If you're making your own game and you're not getting it professionally rated, then don't worry so much about classifying your game as M or T or whatever - just be upfront about what kind of iffy content is in your game.

 

[Benevolentwanderer]

Things can also contain troubling content without technically breaking into a higher age rating. For example, Disney's Tangled has an entire musical sequence about a parent emotionally abusing her child, but it's still considered PG!

You can never go wrong with having a "trigger/content warning list" in a spoiler/secondary page for people who choose to read it.