Would it be a good idea to let the player choose if they want to see the CW?
I’ve seen this as an option within several visual novels. It’s mostly chosen for games where trigger warnings could contain spoilers, but also in case where the warnings are incredibly detailed (in this case, there tends to be a generalized list of warnings and then, a detailed list that’s hidden somewhere). I also see the “click here if you want to see warnings” in choice-based IFs or “type [word] for trigger warnings” in some parsers.
Generally I believe that it’s a completely valid thing to do when warnings might contain spoilers. Players who know that they have boundaries that cannot be crossed will most likely check the warnings and those who want their experience unspoiled can skip them. I can’t see the use for hidden warnings in any other case, though.
One thing you need to keep in mind with hidden warnings is making sure that you don’t mock the player for their need to see trigger warnings (so, no “you’re weak/no fun if you want to know”) when they decide to see them. I knew cases where a dev didn’t include any warnings whatsoever (the game had a fairly triggering scene in it) and only added toggleable warnings later after backlash… and the player was told that they’re no fun for wanting their game spoiled. Not a good move. Don’t do this. You can say that there are spoilers in there in a different way.
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I tend to think of general content warnings and “descriptors” separate from specific trigger warnings.
General warnings are what you see before a movie or a TV program or a video game, like the MPAA or ESRB rating. People know an R rated movie might contain things inappropriate for kids under 18, but a PG movie is usually fine to let kids watch without supervision. The general content warnings used to be purposefully vague - HBO on TV in the 1980s before movies would warn things like.
This movie is rated R for scenes of Violence, Sex and Language.
This movie is rated PG for Language and Brief Nudity
Those were kind of the big three - sometimes referred to as the VSL warning. Cable also sometimes would say “brief nudity” for some less adult stuff. For example some cuts of the musical movie of Grease have brief shots of bare butt when people are “mooning” the cameras at the dance or from inside a car. Or if there’s a distant shot of people jumping into water naked skinny dipping in a non-sexual context.
So, long story short (too late) the broadcasting companies found it useful to define things in slightly more detail as “content descriptors” for cases like violent golden age cartoons where Daffy Duck’s head would be temporarily blown into ashes that crumble away by Elmer Fudd’s shotgun but then quickly grow back, warranting nothing more than side eye from the character.
While we don’t need to copy the MPAA or ESRB, it’s useful to see how they do it.
General content warnings and descriptors (how much sex or violence or language) I include in all my works - these are shown to everyone on the title screen and do not spoil any details:
- Comic Mischief (Absurd Cartoon Violence) - Mild Violence - Violence - Graphic Violence - Gore
- Mature Themes - Adult Themes - Disturbing Themes
- Discussion of Nudity - Described Scenes involving Nudity - Images of Nudity (if there are images in a game)
- Discussion of Sexuality - Implication of Sex - Descriptions of Sex - Explicit Sexual Descriptions
- Adult Language - Adult Humor - Verbal Abuse
The actual “Content Warnings” or “Trigger Warnings” are considered spoilers and are provided on request behind a link. These describe in more detail why the content warning is given. They can still be general and provide more detail if necessary.
Trigger Warning (spoiler)
TW: Animal Violence - Dogs violently attack a human and draw blood, but the animals are not harmed. Dogs are implied to have killed other people but this is not shown or explicitly described.
Again keep in mind that the majority of the people who play your game will go by the general warnings if provided and won’t read the TW sections. Only people who understand they have triggers will usually browse through your trigger warnings, and will appreciate detailed information if they are interested in your work. so for the most part, the argument that “spoilers are bad” is moot with regard to providing informational content and trigger warnings.
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I could see warning delivery practices as its own thread (one I would follow with interest), but I do think it’s ideal to tailor things a bit. Not that I’ve done this myself, Repeat the Ending just says it all on the web page. I am actually going to add some language to the game over the weekend, probably using the method I have in a current WIP.
For that, I use three tiers, which is an idea I saw either here or on a discord someplace.
tier one, from the opening splash (this is an Inform 7 game)
Content Advisory:
Playtesters suggest that this work is most appropriate for adults. You can view more detailed content information by typing *CONTENT* or *CW* at any time during play.
tier two, the *CW* command for something more specific
Content Advisory:
According to playtesters, X is recommended for persons X years of age or older due to Y.Would you like more explicit information, even if it could spoil your sense of discovery?
tier 3, the player answers “yes” to the question, a very explicit listing
Some audiences may be troubled by Z. Please consider whether this content could affect you adversely.
with an idea of just getting more and more specific.
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I think specifying explicitly, “absurd fantasy violence” or the like, is the best option. Someone who has a trigger about, say, violence against animals, might still want to avoid it even if it’s done in Looney Tunes style, but someone who doesn’t want their impressionable young children imitating things doesn’t really have to worry about dropping anvils on people’s heads.
“Genre-typical” is a very useful term, imo, because Looney Tunes murder and Agatha Christie murder and Shakespearean tragedy murder are three very different things, and I’d struggle to explain that difference in a nice concise CW without being able to resort to “genre-typical”.
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I requested a split so we can continue discussing this in a dedicated thread!
In my choice-based games I’ve typically had a title page with a few links, generally, “About”, “Content warnings”, and “Play”. People who don’t want to see the CWs can thus dive right in, while those who are interested can click through. I’ve also used the tiered approach, with a general description as the first tier and then a more detailed description as the second.
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I wondered about this in my most recent game, Dark and Deep, because there’s just so much death of every variety: accidental death, death by old age, death of a baby (due to unspecified but natural causes), and murder. I mean, if I specified all this, that’s the whole game right there. So I didn’t and then felt a little weird about it. At first the CW said something like “all the kinds of death you can imagine,” but then, still futzing with it an hour before the deadline, I changed it to just violence, death and murder.
This is a vexing thing to get right, clearly. Since my game also has sex in it, I really needed some variation on “All the CWs. ALL of them. Every CW.”
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I’ve also used this approach before, putting content warnings in a click-to-reveal section so people can opt in/out of seeing them. I feel like (as long as the CW section is well-signposted) this gives the player the most amount of agency, but I’m really interested to hear about alternative approaches too!
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Right. As most can see I’m a huge advocate of transparency and trigger warnings, but to a certain extent there’s nothing you can do about a person who complains that there are scenes of homicide in a work called Murder on the Moors.
I do like the idea of “genre-typical violence: murder mystery” but there are cosy murder mysteries and intense murder mysteries and clinical murder mysteries depending on framing: Do the investigators happen upon the quiet scene of the crime and routinely investigate clews like safety pins and a draught of potential poison? Do you see the scene of the victim getting bloodlessly shot from a distance after hearing them plead for their life in fear? Is it a werewolf in disguise explicitly ripping someone apart on the page?
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I really enjoyed the YouTuber on a “Disturbing Movies Iceberg” video who prefaced it basically saying “If you have trigger warnings, something in this video will probably trigger all of them, so please click away now, thank you for your consideration.”
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I generally will create a title page, and drop some links onto it- an ABOUT for the blurb of what the work is about and contextualizing the genre, CONTENT WARNINGS for people to click through and read if they’d like, and then START (or BEGIN) to actually enter into the game.
I normally tag things the way people curate them for block or filter lists on other sites, with some variance depicting on if its a graphic depiction, genre typical, or just a mention.
For some select works, such as my fictionalized autobiographical piece that focused on the rupture of an abusive relationship, I went ahead and made it so that in order to click through to the story, the link first popped up a box of warnings- because the entire experience was meant to simulate the player being put into a very potentially triggering situation.
I ultimately think that that was for the best, as many people reached out to me to say that the game brought them back viscerally to their own unhealthy relationships and how those ended. Because of the constraints of the piece, I felt it was more ethical to make it very clear to the player what was up ahead, so that they could opt out if they in fact didn’t want to engage with such a work.
Otherwise, I provide the information in case people want to make use of it, and it’s always clearly positioned- but if a player doesn’t feel the need to double check for themselves, they don’t have to.
Here is an example of the title page layout:
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I’m truly sorry to disagree (in a purely constructive spirit, of course).
I understand the logic, but I find it very delicate and a little dangerous to use the game’s genre or to attempt assigning an intensity value to certain types of content in this context, as it involves relying on the player’s capacity for interpretation and judgment.
A player who, if I well understand, is consulting the content warnings might be vulnerable to content inappropriate for their personal situation, and it is difficult to gauge their sensitivity (without knowing them) to certain themes that, on the other hand, do not disturb the author. If we aim, as has been said, to remain factual and adaptable to all cultures and all ages and all personal histories, and if the player’s well-being is trully the priority, the principle of precaution applies.
Not everyone is receptive to the humor of a cartoon, to the epic nature of High Fantasy, not everyone understands the conventions of a detective adventure, and not everyone has the same experience or perspective. If the author begins to interpret or contextualize to better assist the player, they risk influencing them without truly knowing them.
For instance, let’s imagine Lord of the Rings in IF. The content warnings should succinctly but without deviation mention: Violence, Death, Animal Cruelty, Systemic Oppression, Racism, Classism, Torture, Addiction, Psychological Horror, War, Mass Murder, Discrimination, Manipulation, Suicide, Use of Weapons, Detailed Depictions of Injuries or Illness. Each of them without any additional comment. To play or not to play is the responsability of the player.
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I do think there’s a distinction to be made between content warnings as author courtesy and content warnings as legal mandate, and I’m inclined to classify the ESRB, PEGI, CERO, etc as the latter, especially since it’s basically impossible to get an official release on a gatekept platform without going through those organizations in the target geographic markets and how, at least the ESRB(I’ll let any Europeans and Japanese comment on PEGI and CERO) deemphasize their content descriptors in favor of putting ageist censorship front and center. That said, it might be worth looking up the list of descriptors used by ESRB, PEGI, and CERO to see if there’s anything the institutionalized labeling systems consider worth mentioning that don’t have an equivalent on the list yet.
And yeah, genre-typical is kind of a double edge sword. On the one hand, genre does imply a lot about the content of a work and often serves as a short hand for the kind of things that can be found within. On the other hand, one of the ways to make a game stand out is to subvert genre conventions and not everyone can agree on what features are essential to a work being in a certain genre(Take, for example, Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets. It has pretty much all of the hallmarks of a serial killer murder mystery except only one victim dies, and even that victim is introduced as a ghost with no apparent connection to the mystery until the reveals start).
Another potentially useful yet also potentially thorny label is “period-typical” in regards to works set in the past and which don’t whitewash events.
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@Monsieur.HUT I understand the good intention. But such extensive warnings seem a bit absurd to me. And there definitely is a genre-specific content, like battles with swords, cruel despots, evil magic and more. Maybe mentioning both the CWs and that it is genre-typical would be a solution? Like:
This Fantasy book contains genre-typical content which might trigger you with the following issues: …
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Yes, why not? Perfect for me. (and bookmarked for subsequent use).
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It’s common practice to label games with their genres, and to allude to those genres in blurbs. Most people know what genres they do and don’t like, and can sort games based on preferences. Although the author cannot always be a perfect gauge of how disturbing their content might be to someone else, it is common courtesy to try your best to market a game to its appropriate audience. This is a literary crowd who can be relied on to know the basics of a given genre, but authors do weird stuff sometimes, blending or subverting genres. If you label your game “LOTR-like,” we all know what to expect. But if the orcs are going to rape the hobbits, you might want to throw a CW in there.
This is basically my approach - in Verses, you could ignore warnings entirely, or find general warnings located prominently in the “About” page. From there, you could click each general warning to see more specific (potentially a bit spoiler-y) details.
I think making the warnings even more prominent in a story where people are especially likely to be triggered (like one containing abuse) is a good idea.
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This approach does not seem cautious enough if left as is. Genres evolve, and their conventions are not strictly interchangeable across cultures. What may appear particularly obvious and serve as a reference for us is not necessarily the same for others. When producing a game in English, we are addressing a very specific audience with IF, but one that is potentially global in its geographical distribution. This is why the approach proposed by @Pebblerubble works so well for me: it combines what you are suggesting (common sense, which will cover the general case) with a form of completeness that takes particular cases into account.
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I have this horrible image running through my head now… 
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I think this is a perfect case for a tiered CW! Because someone who is particularly sensitive to death of children, for example, will want to see that information specified in the CW. So I think doing a general warning with the option to view more details would be ideal here. E.g., “This game contains depictions of violence, death, murder, and sexual content. Type [command] for more details.” And then the more detailed version can spell out “accidental death of a child, infant death, death due to old age, murder, sex scene between consenting adults” (or whatever phrasing).
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