About JIG/Casual Gameplay ratings
Over the years of maintaining the site, we have covered thousands of games, most of which are appropriate for an all-ages audience. However, there have been some interactive experiences that we have chosen to feature that may not be appropriate for everyone.
To help determine whether a game is appropriate for you (or for your children), we initially settled on a set of 3 tags: "kidsafe", "pg13" and "mature". The problem with these is they suggest an age range, and over the years we would often receive comments such as "I don't think this game is kidsafe" etc.
So, recently we decided that we should move away from suggesting an audience for the games we review, and instead identify potentially objectionable content a game contains.
To that end, we have created the following simplified series of symbols that you will begin to see appearing within the header for the games that we review, along with these corresponding tags: rating-g (green), rating-y (yellow), rating-o (orange), rating-r (red).
Here's what you can expect to find in games labeled with each symbol:
LANGUAGE:
Green :D = not even mildly harsh language
Yellow :o = mildly harsh language (single instance of "hell" or "damn", for example)
Orange :S = some language concerns
Red xP = George Carlin's Seven Words, uncensored, on loop
VIOLENCE:
Green :D = no violent content at all
Yellow :o = mild violence, cartoon or otherwise, but no blood
Orange :S = violence, and some blood
Red xP = lots of blood
ADULT SITUATIONS (sex, nudity, drugs):
Green :D = no sex, nudity or drug references at all
Yellow :o = very mild adult situations, nudity or innuendo
Orange :S = drug references, nudity or sexually explicit content
Red xP = we won't feature games that would warrant a red in this category.
We will go only as far as indicating the strongest level of content present from all categories combined. The new rating system is designed to simplify our game ratings by flagging objectionable content, not to provide a detailed listing of the content a game contains. It is up to you to decide whether the game is appropriate for you (or for your children).
We will do our best to identify potentially objectionable content in the games we review. We're not perfect, though, and there may still be points of contention, so feel free to speak up and we'll always be there to listen. :)
Thank you for your visits, your comments and your suggestions!
What about nudity (in non-sexual contexts)?
Good point. We'll definitely group that in with sexual content, and use the same basic 'none', 'very mild', 'definitely some', and 'a lot' scale.
I'll update the description, thanks. :)
I LOVE these new icons! XD And the humor in the language section as well.
One question though. Will the reviews contain one icon per group, or one icon that sums up the three groups?
Ooooh thank you! Mainly for the violence third of it. I see a game that looks cool, and I'm all, "Ooh I'll play it." Then I notice a pg13 or mature tag on it. Which makes me stop and read the review thoroughly, just in case. When it doesn't really seem to mention blood or gore at all, and I start playing... sometimes I stop and I'm like, "Ok, nevermind." I definitely appreciate this.
And I just thought of it, and it wouldn't really apply as well as language, violence, and nudity, but maybe something similar for scary games? But... the horror tag tends to sum it up pretty well. At the same time sometimes games don't have the horror tag but still have scary/intensely suspenseful bits that are far from horror, (i.e. The Submachine series. very atmospheric, but... not exactly horror) but I still wouldn't want to play. At the same time, the reviews tend to mention such things very well, so... I don't know. Just an idea.
One icon to represent all content.
We really need a simple system, and I think we've found one that will be better than our previous system.
The best way to evaluate a game on whether the content is appropriate for you (or for your children) is to play the game and see for yourself, but our little 'warning' system will give you a heads-up on the level of severity of potentially objectionable content you can expect: none, mild, some, a lot.
And that's about the best we can do.
Great system; thanks, Jay!
I love playing games here with my 2.5-yr-old, but he's now at the age when there's absolutely no telling what he'll find "scary." He laughed his head off at the Bamba snack quests, though; was even speaking some Hebrew by the end. The color codes will help.
I like that you're trying to be more specific and helpful with the ratings. There are always going to be problems. (I wonder how you would rate Kingdom of Loathing under this system? Cartoon violence, mild innuendo?)
Yes, you're right, there will always be problems, and we're not trying to create a one-size-fits all system, just a better one that will hopefully be easier to administrate for us.
As for Kingdom of Loathing, I'd have to leave that one up to someone who has actually played it (I'm just not fond of RPGs, whatever the flavor).
Let me ask you, Carny Asada, the same question: how would you rate KoL? :)
I think this is a nifty addidtion. I think an even better (yet slightly more complex) system would be to have a filter that will block the entire blog entrys for games of a certain level, but its not necessarly needed at this point.
I'm just curious, but you used xP with a lowercase x for the Red tag, but I've always seen it as XP with an uppercase X, but thats just me. Lol
Wow! This will be really useful! Good idea.
"George Carlin's Seven Words, uncensored, on loop" he he he!
Kingdom of Loathing is a tough one... if it were more of a visual game I would say orange for violence and adult situations, but because it's (almost) all text, the graphicness just isn't there like it is for other games. I don't know if I'd classify the innuendo as "mild", but it's hidden beneath some layers, so that it would sail right over most kids' heads. I'd probably give it a yellow, or maybe an orange just to be safe.
thank you for the rating system!!! before you had this my parents kept busting me for inappropriate game content, considering a simple pg-13 wording at the category didnt really do it, now these really help me.
I'll never understand why sex is considered so much worse than violence... but oh well.
[Edit: I think that's a common misconception. There is no evidence that sex is considered "(much) worse" than violence. I think there is far too much violence in the games we play today. We don't feature games with extreme or gratuitous violence; and games with lots of sex might as well be labeled 'porn', which we won't feature either. Not that it's worse, it's just inappropriate for our audience. -Jay]
The only problem with the rating system is since the icons are the same for everything, unless the author divulges what part of the game may be objectionable, you really have no idea other then the face.
Suggestion: Perhaps you can make it so when you scroll over the face it gives a slightly more detailed description of why it's rated that way? Since there's no other way of knowing if it's for language, violence, or adult situations?
I agree with darcixcore, although it would take a little extra effort. A game could have no language or sexual concern, but be extremely gory/ violent.
Eh, bugs do not wear clothes. Should all games including any animal without a costume not be considered green?
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