My objection is to your wording that it’s “insulting to the strength” of people who have attempted suicide to include warnings. My family member is an incredibly strong individual who’s been through a lot in his life, and his mental illness isn’t a fault of his character.
I don’t think vague content warnings do much good. “Mental illness” could mean anything–is there a character who has anxiety, is there a character who has schizophrenia, is there a character who has BPD? It isn’t enough information for the people who have topics they need to avoid.
And movies do have some content warnings, the rating system commonly used (in the US at least) has vague warnings similar to what you suggest. My opinion is that CoG containing content warnings while usual books and films don’t isn’t that CoG is being overly sensitive, it’s that they take better care of their consumers than most media. Word of mouth, in my experience, makes up for the lack of warnings in the media itself, but the people who need those warnings won’t always be able to hear about them before consuming the media.
I…also never said that the tws themselves were insults to people with suicidal tendencies. I specifically was talking about how people assume those with mental illness can’t handle anything and tend to overshare.
Everyone is taking way too much from what I said. This really is not what I come to these forums for. This thread asked for opinions on a specific style of trigger warnings. I gave my opinion and defended it using my own reasoning. I am entitled to my opinion, as are you. However, at this point, I feel slightly ganged up on here, so I’m gonna dip. Please don’t directly respond or @ me.
Heads up - we had a thread awhile back that talked about content/trigger warnings, where to put them, and how to word them. You might find some of this useful:
@TSSL has it. Put a choice in there. After the choice, hold back nothing. Tell them all of the possible scenarios. People who will read the warnings are more worried about triggers than spoiling the game in any way, and those that worry about being spoiled will choose not to see the warnings. Include the warning ‘spoilers’ in the choice and you’ll be well covered.
Warnings are everyone’s best friend - yours as author so you can avoid being sued due to improper, non-labeled content, as well as ours so that we may avoid that which we don’t like. You don’t have to spoil the experience by being explicit, sometimes simple is best. Example: “This game contains scenes that depict: violence, gore, mental abuse, sexual assault and suicide..” But even if they were slightly spoilery and even if some indiviuals were to be upset about that the truth is they belong to a very small subset of readers. For most people, the benefits of having a forewarning far outweighs the cons.
Agree, that’s the nice thing about choices script, you can do that.
Have a choice of view content warnings (possible spoilers) or continue to the game. That way you can keep everyone happy.
Hey, minor point - cannibalism in a game is not necessarily a fetish. I have what’s arguably cannibalism in my longest-running WIP. I wanted to include a particular monster legend, and it was impossible to honor the original story without including eating people. But there’s a difference, I think, between writing about something and sexualizing or normalizing something.
Psst - we’re not supposed to be talking about this any more. According to the owner on high, it’s not allowed in any COG games, so there’s no need to discuss it here.
This is a good point. “Adult content” could mean so many things. People who love sex scenes could want to avoid other content. There was a problem with that very recently on a forum game. People who like content warnings generally like knowing what content, at least by category, they’re being warned about.
Can you really be sued for not labeling content properly? Is this only in certain countries?
This is the key in my approach. My warning is intended to provide a laundry list of things that may be seen as a trigger or as “material inappropriate to minors.”
Here is my sample warning on my current project:
In that sentence above, I’d mention anything that is out-of-the-ordinary such as cannibalism or fetish skin-wearing. I might also include a specific sentence dealing with a genre of “controversial” ideas such as: [quote] This vampire action-adventure is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes only. [/quote]
The last part is important so that the purpose of writing this is established upfront. Here I establish the “common-genres” that my story falls under so people know that they will find content about vampires (and all the related tropes) and action-adventure (and all its related tropes),
I actually chose to make a preface including both the above prior to giving the choice to skip directly to play or go to detail pages such as the “FAQ” page, “Changelog list” etc where there are details.
I want to be upfront with my readers. I also want to establish expectations. Is it spoiler-heavy? I’d argue it is general enough to give an idea without divulging details.
With regard to @Sashira’s project, part of the warning is in its title. That option is also something that can convey meaning.
Sabres and Guns of Infinity provide an expectation of war in the titles alone.
Aside from food and medicine (for obvious reasons), it seems that the answer is “yes”. Apparently you can get sued for not labeling your videogame as ‘addictive’, as ridiculous as that may sound. If something like that can happen then I’m pretty sure anything goes as long as there’s money involved and someone “in the right set of mind” to take the issue to the courts. Even if nothing is gained and the law is always on the side of whoever is being accused, the truth is that the whole process is a major pain in the bum - a waste of resources, money and time for everyone involved.
Now imagine imagine we’re talking about a book or a videogame that “triggers” someone into depression or even worse… committing suicide, all because it wasn’t properly labeled or forewarned. What’s stopping the family from taking the case to the court and asking for compensation? I guess it depends on what kind of laws your country has but the fact it can happen is kinda worrisome on its own.
Here’s the article about the guy that sued Bethesda about not labeling their game as “addictive”.
In Europe yes, you could be sued. And about cannibalism there is two ways of doing if you just says That monster is a men eater that’s normal and is not fetish.
Other stuff is recreation in the face of people describing with gore details and vivid realism each movement… That is fetish that not add anything more to the story that try to appeal those tastes
Yeah, gory detail veers too hard toward vore, even in horror. I drew from human funerary rites for this story, but that the deceased is part of the meal was never planned to be described in major detail at all, and I’m going to add another option to bypass your character participating if you clicked into the scene without realizing it. I do realize that I’m more indifferent about fictional cannibalism than a lot of people, it’s why I posted this.
FTR, the reason I mentioned the lack of spoilers is for if the game gets put up for sale; the forums and ChoiceScript have spoiler functions, which is fine while it’s being worked on, but most storefronts don’t.
I’d like to mention that it’s really, really important that content warnings are…content warnings; that they take what they are seriously, and are specific. A while back I read a fanfiction in which the content warnings contained more jokes about Badass Speeches than warnings about the actual content, and not even very specific warnings, so I figured it was going to be a relatively lighthearted piece with a few darker moments, none of which would touch on anything I found personally triggering (and so thought “yeah, I can read this in the headspace I’m in now”). It was not, and I’m the kind of person who has difficulty detaching when immersed, so by the time I realized the actual tone of the story and then stopped reading, I’d already basically read the whole thing. And the thing is, it wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d gone in knowing what I was getting into; if I had, I would have been prepared and able to see signs of the bad parts coming and immediately stop reading.
