To what extent is violence allowed? Things get somewhat gory in other stories, but I just need to make sure.
For example:
No mercy: You fire a single bullet into his head, and walk forward as you shoot the corpse over and over again, your eyes watering before the click of the gun shows you’ve emptied your entire clip into your now dead enemy’s head.
No mercy: You fire a single bullet into his head, as the white tiles behind your enemy get splattered with blood. You continue to walk forward, watching with satisfaction as each round simply ensures he’ll stay down…forever.
No mercy: You look at his startled expression before he dashes over to his gun. You slowly aim and shoot anywhere, as long as it hits his body, you really don’t care. Legs, arms, chest, neck, all get hit or grazed. The figure screams, on the outside, it’s just blood.
On the inside, it’s much worse-torn ligaments, muscles, shattered bone, teeth, flesh, all torn apart or scattered by the minuscule pieces of metal flying from your gun.
He continues to crawl, and you calmly step on his open back wound, and while he screams, send your last slug into his skull. Your work is done.
I may be mistaken, but i believe even the last, third one is allowed. However I believe you NEED TOO, and it would be correct only to warn your audience of possible blood and gore, and high violence.
I myself added a warning on Equia topic that as i progress, mature themes may be present, blood and gore, or violence. The rest is up to people to decide will they read it or not.
First, to be clear, we consider any explicit sex, rape, sexual violence, violence against children or disabled people, torture, or sadistic violence to be mature content. Games which contain these or similar topics should only be posted in the Adult Content categories.
Aside from that there aren’t strict rules, but it’s polite to put a note at the start of the story or at the link saying that there’s a lot of gore.
I’m honestly not 100% sure where the line is with HG for graphic violence and it may also have to do with context as well as the violence itself. Adult games have been declined before if they are considered unsuitable for HG publication. If you have specific concerns, you’re probably best to email them as they don’t always read all the topics on the forum. Also as Szaal said bear in mind that the stores can have the final veto on this even if it is passed through HG to be submitted. At best they may choose to slap a high age restriction on your game which reduces your audience, but honestly that’s probably what you’d want with a graphically violent game anyhow.
I’ve not much to say besides what has already been said by others.
Bear in mind that while the company might have its own standard for graphic violence this does not transfer over to other publishing platforms such as Steam, GooglePlay, or iTunes.
Choice of the Rebels, for instance, had to be part of its story rewritten. I’m not entirely sure on the details, so I’ll ping @Havenstone for clarity.
Here’s a link to a semi-related topic that you might find insightful. Cheers.
Considering games that have plenty of violence and gore like NOLA is Burning and Samurai of Hyuga have been published I don’t think there is anything to fear.
Of course, warning your audience of what is in your game is only fair.
That was all me, to improve things based on reader feedback–nothing to do with content concerns. The violence level in Rebels as published is exactly as I wrote it.
