A belated follow up to this now that IFComp is over! If you scroll back to the original post, you’ll see that a LOT of games were added (most of them by me, and I only played about half the games, so likely there are more that could be included). The ones listed are a mix of games that had no content warnings on the IFComp page and games that did have some warnings, but that (in my opinion) needed additional ones.
So thinking about this, and as kind of a follow up to this thread, I wanted to talk some more about best practices for writing content warnings (CWs) for one’s work. These are my own opinions/thoughts based on time spent thinking, reading, and conversing with other people about content warnings. Please chime in with any constructive additions you may have! (Conversely, please do NOT take this as an opportunity to argue about the validity of content/trigger warnings. I’m posting this for people who see their value and want to utilize them.)
General thoughts on what to include
The easiest rule of thumb for what warrants a CW is the depiction of anything that would or could be traumatic if it happened to someone in real life. Examples include physical harm, mental or emotional suffering, or death of a loved one.
There are also things that warrant CWs despite not being in and of themselves negative or traumatic, like sexual content. My rule of thumb here is considering whether your work includes anything that’s commonly considered or likely to be a sensitive subject. Besides sexual content, use of drugs and alcohol also falls into this category. There are many reasons why someone might not want to be surprised by this kind of content in a work, from personal to practical (for the latter, I’m thinking about if you’re playing at work or with a child around). Including a CW for this type of content isn’t saying there’s anything wrong with it, but just acknowledges that it may be a sensitive subject for some players.
Of course, people also have triggers and sensitivities that don’t fall into either of these categories. I’ll come back to that at the end of this post!
Tips for writing CWs
Try to find a balance between too vague and overly specific. Just “death” isn’t the most helpful; instead, specify whether it’s death of a parent/child/spouse/pet, death in the context of war/illness/accident, etc. But on the flipside, being overly specific isn’t helpful either. CWs are meant to give a quick rundown of the content, and should be simple and easy to take in. You don’t need to summarize plot events in your CW; just be straightforward and factual.
Specifying the degree to which the content is described or featured in your work can be helpful. A brief mention of alcohol is very different from a depiction of excessive drinking, so it’s nice if your CW makes it clear which applies.
If you’re unsure of the level of detail to include, or are concerned about the CW containing spoilers, one possibility (which IF as a medium makes particularly easy) is implementing a tiered content warning. E.g., “Contains scenes depicting violence and death. Click here/type [command] to see more details.” And then your more detailed version might say, “PC participates in a knife fight and kills several NPCs.”
What if I'd rather not?
To anyone who’s read this far and doesn’t want to include content warnings with their work, I offer the suggestion that you add a note saying that you’re choosing not to include them. This will at least give readers/players a heads-up that your work may include disturbing or potentially sensitive content, ensuring that they won’t assume the lack of CWs means there is no such content in the work.
Crowd-sourced CWs for the IntFiction community
I started making a list of things that I think generally warrant CWs, but as mentioned above, even the most exhaustive list I come up with won’t cover everything that everyone might like a warning about! So I am going to put that list in a new thread and make it a wiki so that anyone can edit it, whether to add common ones that I’ve missed or to add ones that are more personal/idiosyncratic. Then authors will have an easy reference for what kinds of things this community would like warnings about. It’s never going to be perfect or exhaustive (for one thing, not everyone who plays our games frequents this forum!), but I figure it will be helpful to some extent, at least. Will edit this post with the link shortly! Link!