what sort of content is allowed in your books? For example: bad language, graphic scenes, etc
Hi @straken24 -
Welcome to the community. If you follow this link, there are all sorts of things to help you get started including CoG guidelines and tutorials for coding.
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Thank you for the fast reply and of course for the link.
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As long as you specify that those kinds of things are in your book ,youāre good to go.
The only restriction on content that I have been able to find(for Hosted Games anyway), is this line:
āGames must not contain deeply offensive material, such as scenes that glorify sexual violence or racist attitudes.ā
So, almost everything āmundaneā is allowed, as far as I understood. Unless Iām misinterpreting it, itās okay for the work to contain āneutralā or condemning depictions of sexual violence or racism, or torture or politics or such, as long as it isnāt glorifying it.
Of course, thatās incredibly subjective. What sort of content is actually glorifying something? Is it any content at all that deals with it? Or is it content that has the potential to glorify it from the players perspective(a choice that says āI love X and hate Yā)? Or is it glorifying only if the general theme of the game is like that? What if the villain holds an attitude like that? Is that okay, because the villain has it(and thus by definition itās considered wrong)?
Iād assume that itās not okay to have one branch that condemns racism, but another that glorifies it, since the game would still contain the glorifying scene, and thus it would contain deeply offensive material, regardless of what the intent is. But about the other details, I have no idea. And frankly, Iād like to know, since itād be nice to have a clear guideline before I get into actually writing what Iām planning to write.
For example, Iād really like to know the general consensus on what is considered racist. In a fantasy or scifi game, can I have a scene about tension between humans and cyborgs? Is it okay to touch on the ethics of genetic engineering(of humans) or artificial intelligence? Is it okay to be racist against orcs or other āmonstrousā creatures? If yes, how are such creatures defined? Is it okay only if theyāre non-humanoid(like dragons or slimes or such)? Or is that wrong as well?
A more practical example: Iām currently thinking of a cyberpunk setting where there are artificial humans that have been produced by a biotech company. Is it glorifying racism if the general populace fears them due to their perceived superiority or because they feel threatened by them? On the other hand, is it glorifying racism if these artificial humans feel superior to regular humans? Should I just gloss over everything related to such things? It would feel very strange from an immersion perspective, as such things would probably be relevant to the setting and the characters.
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I think in the case of fictional forms of oppression and discrimination, toxic ideas encouraged by the game will still read as a glorification of whatever discrimination (racism, sexism, trans and homophobia, etc) the fictional scenario most closely resembles.
I feel like with a lot of dnd-esc fantasy games and worlds being even more popular lately, this is being addressed a lot more. But Iāve noticed a lot of ~fantasy~ forms of cultural bias just seem like ways for content creators to sneak characters being racist without having to answer for including racists in their made up world.
One popular example would be orcs vs elves. Orcs (in dnd at least) are commonly depicted as savages, extremely unintelligent despite being a playable character, (half-orcs at least? idr if my orc character is homebrew or not) and are shown in official art far more often with darker skin, locks, and other characteristics commonly associated with black people compared to other playable race, besides dark elves who are also an āevilā race.
Elves on the other hand are seen as one of the most intelligent racesā¦there are non-white elf sub-races that canonically exist (sun elves) but the majority of official and fan art still depict them as pretty much European humans with pointy ears, usually complete with platinum-blonde hair and a gentle naturalistic (if not a little stuck up) attitude towards life.
It could, and has been argued that this narrative enforces a racist belief by depicting the evil creatures in the world as a black/non-white caricature, complete with pointy teeth and broken English, while most of the hero or adventurer roles go to the pale, more civilized race. Does this make dnd inherently racist? Absolutely not. Does the popular depiction of medieval-fantasy settings generally have racist ideals mixed into it? Yeah! Do I think content creators mean to promote harmful ideas every time they do this? No. Its just an incredibly popular mistake that people can make with the best intentions. The important thing is trying to avoid it, and being able to apologize and fix any mistakes you do make.
Addressing issues surrounding oppression and discrimination indirectly can get messy very quickly, and I think iffy material is more likely to get approved in a fantasy setting because its not blatantly horrible. Still, almost every fantasy scenario can be applied to the real world as a metaphor, and you need to be ready for that and any message your game might be giving that you donāt want to give!
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You canāt please everybody all of the time. There are people out there who evidently see it as their duty to be permanently offended and all you can really do is hope they overlook your contribution to society and go and pick on someone else.
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Would it be possible to get further clarification on what content Hosted Games allows for publication?
Iāve read what it says here above, and below in this link, but I, and many others still wish for further clarification.
Thereās a general worry that the requirements are changing for publication, but without any true clarification on the matter. And writing a few hundred thusand interactive words before knowing if you will have to change language/engine/publication-site is discouraging. Very much so.
Would this clarification be possible to get? And who do I tag to ask this to the right people?
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It would be best to contact Hosted Games directly with questions, as every game will be a different situation and staff donāt always monitor the forum.
hg-submissions (at) choiceofgames (dot) com is the address to contact. Thatāll ensure that it gets read by the right people.
Iām no expert on the Hosted Games process, but as far as Iām aware, itās something like:
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Your content should not glorify anything offensive, but itās fine to show complex topics if handled carefully. In fictional settings, try to be mindful of real-world issues and avoid using harmful stereotypes by mistake.
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Thank you 
But sadly Iām not only asking for my own game. Iām more hoping to get an answer if there are any further clarified guidelines for all HG games looking to be published, or if thereās a way to get this somehow?
I would assume some kind of internal guideline exists?
I think even just a couple of examples of what is allowed vs not would help a lot of authors feel more comfortable writing on these massive endevours for so long 
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On the note of guidelines:
If someone has the time to set it up, itād be nice to have guidelines (content, image sizes, formatting etc) easily accessible somewhere. Right now everything seems scattered and scrambled throughout various threads, footnotes and other pages 
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Sorry, I donāt know; Iām aware of various guidelines for CoG and HC but itās very different when editors have overseen a project from the beginning and when thereās a understanding between the editor and author of what the authorās intentions are.
When this has come up before, the answer has consistently been āit will depend on the game and contextā. The nature of this kind of content review is that itās subjective and really will depend on a lot of factors that are difficult to cover specifically: thatās why the information is so general.
I know āyouāll need to change X in order to be publishedā when submitting isnāt always something people will want to hear (or implement), but āY should be fine. Actually no, Y will need to be changed because of how itās handled in this gameā isnāt ideal either, and I could see the latter happening a lot if HG were to issue more specifics.
Presumably, but thatās not something thatās been shared in public to my knowledge.
@MeltingPenguins this is the link that I know of for that side of things.
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Why do people think the requirements are changing, if they havenāt actually announced the requirements are changing?
Itās hard to make definitive rules about this kind of thing, because so much depends not only on what is written about, but how itās handled. And āhow itās handledā is itself a complex calculation, based on genre, tone, player and/or character agency, style, approach, and overall themes. Almost anything can be done in a way that has artistic merit, and almost anything that isnāt entirely bland can be done in a way thatās gratuitously offensive.
I can assure you of one thing: Hosted Games staff arenāt keeping some precise set of standards secret on purpose. Theyāre not looking to trip up prospective writers. Itās their time and money on the line too - the time required to read hundreds of thousands of words of interactive fiction, although minuscule compared to the authorās effort, is not inconsiderable, and a submitted game rejected for publication on content grounds represents potentially dozens of work-hours expended with absolutely nothing in return.
Probably the best thing you can do if you have a reasonable concern is contact them directly at the email @HarrisPS provided above and explain the particulars of the situation.
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Thank you.
If someoneās got the time at some point, could all that info maybe be put into a pinned thread or itās own page so all that info (permitted content, image sizes, formatting guidelines etc) is collected in one easy to find place?
Think probably the best place to say this would be here given itās on topic and thereās some recent discussionās here?
Not gonna be terribly specific especially as Iām not a writer and I donāt want to explicitly name games, but I do find the applied guidelines very confusing due to the context of one story getting rejected for offensive content, given thereās nothing I know of in the game that I think is particularly bad, yet thereās a published HG that I find consistently wildly offensive and in terrible taste. I recognize different people have different lines and such, but I canāt see that HG going through and other getting dropped under the same person/ruleset. Not saying itās necessarily inconsistent or thereās some internal bias or whatever else, Iām honestly just really confused with what I know the general rules are contrasted by that one particular HG being published. When I played it I thought it was something like clear evidence that basically just about anything goes under HG, yet obviously thatās not the case which I already knew beforehand from the general guidelines. That specific one just stands out a ton to me now having seen a game I know isnāt anywhere near that be rejected due to offensive content.
Ugh. Sorry this is so vague, as said I donāt think I should be giving specific names even if at least one of the stories is obvious due to timing/context.
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@MeltingPenguins Itās all on its own page already, I thought?
I wouldnāt want to duplicate that info on the forum - it would need to be maintained and if requirements were to change, that would be multiple places to update. If something is missing at that link that you think should be there, itās worth contacting Hosted Games and asking them to add it.
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Iād argue itās decently hidden. If one doesnāt know where to look, it isnāt too easy to find. Granted, itās not the Hitchhikerās Guide to the Galaxy level of āhard to find infoā that some pages hide accessibility and private data settings in, but itās still a bit tricky. 
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Ultimately, the definition of āextremely offensiveā is like the definition of obscenity: āI know it when I see it,ā in the judgment of the company. Sometimes thatās going to mean that something gets published that you donāt think should be published, sometimes it means that something that you think should be publishable gets the ax for some reason or another.
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Yeah I figured for that, itās just that for the one HG it feels way beyond anything else thatās published to a severe degree. A particular thing that sticks in my mind is the ton of racism, misogyny, and transmisogyny it has (and not in a āexists in the context of the game but isnāt representative of the authorā way, but is within the narration itself), in addition to the sex that is more explicit/regular/ābad tasteā than the unpublished game (which is the only thing that comes to mind that may be considered offensive in the unpublished game), stuff that CoG is pretty explicit about not being okay in what it publishes (the bigotry; I know sex is at least circumstantially fine even in official books). Thatās really why that one game throws me so hard, because of how stark it is to everything else published and the stated guidelines, and then as said the one not getting in making it clear there is some sort of lines that HG somehow doesnāt cross.
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