Writing my game, I’m always trying to be cautious, thinking ‘gotta keep this PG.’ The game has some infrequent swearing (which I could do away with easily). However does depiction of gambling mean pretty much an automatic 17+? If it does, that means my game would have to get that rating, and I might as well stop bothering to try and keep the rest of the game PG.
Cog has no problem against mature material . Always it respects the core of the company like gender queer friendly, not denigrating or forcing any gender of course No rape and abusing. Other stuff is Apple that could be a pain in the ass censoring weird scenes.
But swearing and gambling is no problem there are swearing gambling and violence in some Hosted games and Cogs.
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Like Mara says, it depends on the Apple store, which has very strict rules. You might be able to find their guidelines somewhere. I don’t think gambling is a problem, since there are tons of apps for slots, poker, and other gambling-type activities. In order to earn a 17+ rating, I think you would have to include sex, extreme violence, or excessive swearing (think Quentin Tarantino).
I hope a simple dice game scene in ancient times passes muster - it would be weird they allow Colosseum gladiators but a simple dice game would be a black mark.
Yet regulations are a touchy thing. I remember that some EU requirements and Australian requirements were different than American and in some cases games were delayed to try to get them conforming everywhere.
In my experience, depicting slavery was an issue in Europe.
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Not sure whether CoG rates its games or if the vendors rate them (perhaps at CoG’s suggestion?).
In any case, if you have a read of the forum FAQ, the adult content examples mentioned there include “intense horror themes, graphic descriptions of violence, explicit sexual content/erotica, or rape (explicit or implied).”
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I read that as “disintegrating” on the first look at your post… Made it very interesting anyway, maybe I’ll include someone disintegrating if I every try to make a CoG again.
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Oh well, that’s fine then. I probably have a PG enough game. It’s no Quentin Tarantino movie! Games ratings are ridiculous though. I remember how in England mass effect 1 was rated 12+ but it was 17+ internationally. Overall I often feel that games ratings are too high compared to movies with similar content, but hey ho what can you do?
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Well; disintegrating is not very mature or gore. Fallaut and many cartoons have it.
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Probably because games are designed to be interactive and as such can invite, or indeed require, the user to be an active participant in whatever “questionable content” they contain. At least that’s the boilerplate disclaimer in favour of being “tougher” on games than other media.
Note that US and (West)European definitions on what “questionable content” actually is do vary and most games therefore follow the US definition of it: “Violence is good, nudity and sex are evil” rather than the reverse, which is how I would prefer to see it.
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It’s noteworthy to be aware that simulated gambling is one thing (e.g. minigames), while references to gambling (e.g. talking about a poker game) is another in the context of rating.
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Which gets the higher rating? Not obvious to this bumpkin…
There’s actually a kid’s cartoon (with some pretty iffy content on multiple levels, but it was made in the 80’s which probably explains most of it, weird decade) called “All dogs go to heaven”. It’s somehow rated G and contains violence (including murder, drowning, intentional hit by car and gun violence), alcohol consumption, and gambling. (Look up “you can’t keep a good dog down” clip if you don’t believe me ).
In saying that, it doesn’t have swearing otherwise it’d be PG lol. (The ratings system is a bit messed up sometimes). If all you have is a few swear words and references to gambling, I suspect it’d end up in the PG category which is where a lot of the HG’s and COG seem to end up.
(An actual gambling game you spend money on to play, I think gets a higher age rating due to potential for abuse, but you wouldn’t have that in a text game I’d think)
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Any actual simulated event (ie gambling, slavery, etc) got flagged in the EU - mentioning the word usually did not meet the bar unless the word or image is nazi related. In the US, sex and nudity are the voodoo topics as @idonotlikeusernames indicates above.
All Dogs go to Heaven was a staple of my childhood. I remember it fondly; though now that you mention it, I’m not terribly sure how it got a G rating…
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The ratings systems cares about simulated a lot (mostly in the vein of not selling poker games to minors), but but not really about references. It’s noteworthy to remember we get rated in the general thought process of how games are rated, which makes things very, odd at times.
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