Or you could also do something like Type the trigger warning for more details. and then the player can type SEXUAL CONTENT and get Content warning for sexual content: explicit sex between consenting adults..
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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
I donât think that MPAA ratings are âpurposefully vagueâ â both of those warnings use the MPAA rating system to its full extent. And the system didnât just come out of nowhere.
The MPAA created the rating system to allow the film industry to make films with content outside the self-censorship limits required by the Hays code. The MPAA itself, then operating as the MPPDA, originally implemented the Hays code in the 1920s-1940s. Both the Hays code and the MPAA system were the result of public and government pressure.
Itâs also worth noting that CARA, a board made up of parents, actually views the films and applies the MPAA ratings, including the content descriptors.The MPAA itself and other parties canât actually choose to apply a vague warning for any specific films.
I guess you can say that the film industry didnât create a robust enough system, but itâs not like they just created the lightest system they could. It was absolutely made to satisfy audiences as well as the film industry.
Itâs not entirely unlike how indie game/IF content warnings are created to satisfy audiences. The difference is that indie content warnings are self-applied by authors, and that comes with certain disagreements ⌠as the recent Isekai thread showed.
Critically, most indie creators have never had to deal with government pressure or public pressure outside of a small community, which I expect would make indie creators lose their enthusiasm for author-created warnings pretty quickly.
TV Ratings and ESRB game ratings are different.
@mewtamer I do think thereâs a distinction to be made between content warnings as author courtesy and content warnings as legal mandate, and Iâm inclined to classify the ESRB, PEGI, CERO, etc as the latter
That depends. With the ESRB, itâs clearly a commercial requirement, and itâs not even a widespread one outside of the console market â Steam doesnât require it, for example.
The law is different: In the US., state-level laws banning the sale of M-rated games struck down in 2011 in the U.S. I donât know what the current situation is though.
(Other countries can do whatever they want with the ESRB, in line with their own laws. Canada apparently treats video games as films for rating purposes. And unlike with the MPAA, Canada does have legal enforcement around film ratings for audience admittance/purchases. Wikipedia has an example of how an M-rated game was legally age-restricted in Ontario, though again, it may have changed since.)
PEGI is legally required in some places. I donât know about CERO.
This is based on my own research ⌠I am not a lawyer.
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I understand, I donât know if those were MPAA (which was G/PG/R) I meant that back in the early days of cable the the three basic warning lights theyâd turn on were âlanguage, violence, nudityâ since cable TV didnât have a box office or a ticket-taker to discourage the wrong people from seeing movies. They only thing they could do was avoid showing movies that were hard-R until the evening. Eventually qualifiers were added âmild violenceâ âgraphic violenceâ to distinguish between gradations of violence - kids at summer camp fist fighting vs Leatherface with a chainsaw.
Sort of the same reason they finally added a PG-13 so that a film like Beetlejuice or Gremlins had a place to sit between Shrek and Friday the 13th.
And you are right - the MPAA isnât punishing movies or making value judgements with their rating, theyâre just a regulatory board to help the theaters know how to market and gate films. In fact, films arenât required to be rated, but it used to be really difficult to put an âunratedâ film in commercial cinemas. An official rating helps everyone.
In fact, one thing I recently learned is movie production companies even offer window and poster art with different ratings - so a multiplex showing an array from Disney movies to horror movies have different art they can display versus a single auditorium theater that is only showing a single movie at a time and can display the âscarierâ poster without fear kids passing it to see Encanto wonât be distracted. (I do remember as a small child going to a theater that was showing The Muppet Movie and Superman and Student Bodies and being anxious weâd accidentally be seated in the wrong theater with the horror movie since the posters were displayed together. That was a thing that happened at smaller theaters - theyâd show different movies in the same auditorium at different times and ticket-mixups would happen.)
Trailers as well - a friend of mine recounted how angry she was back in the 80s when she took her niece to see something - like Herbie Goes Bananas with a matinee theater full of children and somehow they showed the trailer for The Shining beforehand with the expected calamitous reaction.
In fact, I saw an interview with Eli Roth who has made some ridiculously violent movies, and he said the MPAA is his best friend because theyâll instructively work with him to target an R rating.
Which is kind of my point - you want the correct audience for your work. You might cut some of the audience, but youâll get better reviews by setting the correct expectations so people who arenât at all into what youâre putting out there arenât angered by it.
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Thatâs all interesting. But I think ratings etc. are a different thing than CW. For example here in Germany many video games and some movies which were âon the indexâ (practically forbidden from public, but buyable by adults) are now rated viewable by teens. That wouldnât happen with CWs, because the fact that it contains X (sex, violence, whatever) stays unchanged.
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Which is kind of my point - you want the correct audience for your work. You might cut some of the audience, but youâll get better reviews by setting the correct expectations so people who arenât at all into what youâre putting out there arenât angered by it.
I probably overwrote, but I kind of agree. In practice, MPAA ratings are well-liked by parents, and indie content warnings are well-liked by the relevant online communities.
However, I disagree that ratings and content labels simply help everyone. MPAA ratings are unapologetically centrist â âparents making decisions for children who little no direct choice in what they seeâ is about the safest group you can cater to if you want to make a ratings system that doesnât attract backlash.
And people to the left or right who donât like that will still ignore the ratings system and just go with their own community ratings websites â non-authoritative ones â that emphasize their concerns. Take the difference between Movieguide (Iâm looking it up and finding a focus on blasphemy, portrayal of worship, partial nudity, indirect portrayal or discussion of sex, and gorish violence) vs DoesTheDogDie (which has a focus on animal treatment, abuse, self-harm, gun violence, sexual abuse, homophobia, transphobia, etc).
If the MPAA tried to put too much focus on any of those things at particular times in its history, there would be backlash and it could collapse, just like the Hays Code did before it (though it seems the controversy that led to the collapse was mainly within the MPAA itself). Anyway, you really canât appeal to everyone.
Going back to the start⌠itâs relatively easy for creators in small communities to write content warnings that satisfy most of their audience at present, so Iâm with you on that.
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Isnât that kind of a good thing? You want a centrist general guideline, and for more specifically targeted information you visit your community website.
Years ago I used to hate-read a review site that was intended to provide very specific warnings about movies for extremely religious viewers because to me it was hilarious - like one family film got points off for âsuggestive eye movementsâ. And the reviewer was so well spoken and thorough, giving the narrative about perching on the edge of his theater seat with his pre-printed form and pencil handy, nervous if he would be able to make it all the way through Risky Business - which defaulted to an all-zero score. He cited Bible verses supporting removing points from scores in seven categories with graphical thermometers for a visual on how inappropriate nearly every movie was for viewers this averse to any sort of conflict.
I shared it once with my buddy hoping for collaborative mocking and pointing, but he was like âThis is a really good thing. Itâs not written for you.â
âOh. youâre right.â
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[scratching head]
The only thing I can sort from this babel of ideas & opinion is that drafting a CW list & description is best to be one of the very last thing to do, when everyting is fixed in place and testerâs opinion are polled⌠so, for me, issue closed until mid-'26 
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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I think thatâs sensible, with the proviso that in recruiting testers, youâll want to be mindful of their sensibilities and potential triggers too; itâs easier than writing a content warning, because youâll be in a dialogue with them anyway so you can clarify anything which is concerning, but donât drop something harrowing on the testers whoâve just volunteered to help you out without warning.
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Testers are valuable to point out potential TW the author may not think of.
And yes, setting the actual CW is best at the end when you know what made the cut for publishing, although most authors are pre-cognizant of whatâs in the story and can rough them out during authoring for testing.
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Iâve playtested a work in progress three times. Each of those times, I asked testers about recommended minimum age and specific content warnings.
The cool thing is that my own guesses about these things were wrong. Iâd spent so much time with the text that I had become a bad judge of how it would affect people. So the feedback was pretty useful.
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This affects every aspect of an authorâs interaction with their own work, I think. Itâs like how you can pick up on typos easily in other peopleâs work, but you just canât see them in your own-- because you know what itâs supposed to say and so thatâs what you see. And how you just canât see that a player might try things in that order, because you planned it to happen in this order, and itâs so hard to get outside of your own thoughtbox. And of course there are those topics that arenât upsetting to the author, and when itâs a small moment in all the work youâve done itâs hard to remember that it might upset others.
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me: âoh, just some everyday mental illness stuff, no biggieâ
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I think itâs completely fair to say the MPAA and whoever does the ratings for broadcast/cable television in the US are vague to the point of uselessness unless youâre just going to uncritically follow their ageist recommendations for who should be banned from watching a given movie/show. The ESRBâs content descriptors, even if theyâre generally out of sight, out of mind, especially in stores that keep games under lock and key, at least contain some information. And while itâs unreasonable to expect anyone to be able to compile a list of content warnings to satisfy every audience, it feels like the MPAA and whoever does the ratings for US television arenât even trying to inform viewers and just cater to the overprotective parents who wish they could just ban anything with violence, sex, or profanity.
And maybe the institutionalized ratings arenât legally binding in most places, but I get the impression most such systems exist mostly out of publishers self regulating in hopes of avoiding government intervention.
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Despite tagging my previousâŚthree?âŚworks as murder mysteries where you have to examine a corpse for clues, a tester for Familiar Problems had to remind me that I should probably warn players that the game requires you to straight-up murder (and later reanimate) another character to solve a puzzle!
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Isnât that kind of a good thing? You want a centrist general guideline, and for more specifically targeted information you visit your community website.
I guess so. As you noted, it depends on which group you fall into.
In principle, I think itâs good that there are systems have a sort of quasi-authority, like the MPAA and ESRB, and itâs good that those systems happen to be centrist and broad enough to be useful. But in practice, a bit too much power has formed around them due to commercial enforcement (or, outside of the U.S., legal enforcement).
So Iâd prefer for communities to hold their biased but targeted community guidelines above those centrist rating systems â not just as a secondary option.
To put forward one example: if Steam had something like the IMDB parentsâ guide, it would be pretty much my ideal. No insistence on ESRB ratings, plus content warnings were written by a variety of reviewers with different stances (as opposed to the current creator content warnings).
Critically, Iâd like that to be in the background so that community warnings donât have an impact on how the creator/publisher presents their work. Maybe it would even make authors feel less of a need or desire to publish their own content warnings, though I doubt it.
(I guess Steam does some age gating too ⌠I donât know how itâs enforced and Iâm ignoring it for the sake of the example).
Iâm not quite sure anymore what people are arguing - MPAA is âtoo genericâ but authored CW/TW are âtoo specific and spoileryâ.
I donât think the MPAA is exerting any sort of undue power - movies donât require a rating, itâs the theaters who need to know in general which movies to not sell tickets to children for unless accompanied by a parent who decides itâs okay for them to see it. The ESRB just prevents games with mature content from being viewed on Steam and require a gate to view or purchase. Warnings and ratings are generally more important for home video so a parent doesnât pop Porkyâs Revenge into the DVD to occupy their children thinking itâs an animated cartoon about whacky farm animals.
The more specific sites like the specifically religious one I discussed have to be visited specifically by consumers, and thus have no pull on what content is shown. As my friend said - if Iâm not religious and donât have kids those sites are not informational to me and donât deserve my scorn.
Iâm not quite sure anymore what people are arguing - MPAA is âtoo genericâ but authored CW/TW are âtoo specific and spoileryâ.
Personally, I have no opinion on the spoilery vs. not spoilery argument.
The genericness and centrism of the ESRB/MPAA isnât really core to my argument either. I think theyâre necessarily centrist, but what exactly is âcentristâ is partially an accident of time and place. I think you mentioned the systems have changed a bit above.
My real concern really is about power. As you noted, the organizations and raters themselves donât have much power themselves. But there are other ways for power to arise, including
- (1) powerful commercial groups using a soft tool, like ESRB and MPAA
- (2) weak independent authors being expected to write content warnings according to a strong community standard, which I acknowledge is something most people see as good
âESRB just prevents games with mature content from being viewed on Steamâ
No, and I canât stress this enough, the ESRB does not and cannot do anything except rate games for which publishers choose to get ratings. It canât even make publishers get a rating. Instead, retailers pressure publishers to get ratings.
Expanding on that ...
Steam and other retailers have chosen whether to require ESRB ratings. Then, they decide their own policies for enforcing age limits.
For example, most retailers require ESRB ratings. Steam doesnât. Gamestop IDâs buyers of M-rated games. Steam just asks the userâs age.
Steam can also age gate based on non-ESRB information provided by the publisher.
The situation seems reasonable right now, and itâs definitely flexible, so Iâm kind of happy with it even though there is some commercial exertion of power.
The more specific sites like the specifically religious one I discussed have to be visited specifically by consumers, and thus have no pull on what content is shown
Like I say, having no pull on what can be shown is ideal.
You might not like the religious ones but you would probably find DoesTheDogDie more useful, since youâve mentioned advocating for trigger warnings. It contains things that would usually fall under that category and wouldnât be listed in other systems.
And again, ESRB/MPAA ratings are also meant to be used as tools by individuals too. Theyâre okay, kind of, insofar as their content. I use them despite being critical of the system. The problem is just just that power has arisen around them.
Iâm going to close this thread as itâs wandered off topic from actual content warning with regard to games.
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