Family Friendly – Mature Audience Ratings, How to Determine Them?
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This will be a thread on how one determines a rating for a song. The following below are a list of details that can help one determine whether or not a song is family friendly or not. Feel free to tell me what you think and if you disagree, tell me ways to make this thread better!
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-Violent Imagery
*Family Friendly: Vagueness to minor violence like “beating” or “fighting” is fine, or using violence in terms of a heroic or noble cause fits into the family friendly category.
*Supervision Recommended: Any references to bloodshed, fighting in wars, gang violence, would fit more into the Supervision Recommended.
*Mature Audience: The only thing I can think of that would fit into Mature Audience with violent imagery would be real life events, or grotesque details of said violent imagery. Otherwise, most violent songs would fit more in Supervision Recommended.
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-Sexual Content
*Family Friendly: No sexual content is permitted. At best, the closest you can say is something about loving, kissing, or any affectionate action that’ll make your sister go “aww” instead of “eww”.
*Supervision Recommended: Insinuations of sex is fine as long as there’s no specific actions. Mentioning sexual body parts is debatable, but in my opinion, words like “penis”, “breasts”, “butt”, “vagina” is fine, further more, slang terms like “booty”, “ass”, “boobies”, “titties”, is fine. But “dick”, “cock”, and “pussy” (only when referring to one’s vagina. Using it as a synonym for cat or a slang for being a coward is fine.) should be reserved for Mature Audience. Mentioning insides of body parts like “urethra”, “clitoris”, “glutinous maximums”, aka words that an adult knows but a child may not understand, is fine. Lastly, the word “rape” and the insinuations of rape is fine. (Personally, I don’t fine this appropriate for Supervision Recommended, but previous Rock Band tracks mention or outright stated rape so if we’re going to stay faithful to Rock Band’s rating system, rape is okay. (I swear, that phrase should never be said and I feel dirty typing it.)
*Mature Audience: Any sexual content such as slang words, sexual words, and sexual actions are reserved for mature audience rating.
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-Alcohol / Drug References
*Family Friendly: No alcohol or drug references whatsoever. (Alcohol may be debatable as some E10 rhythm games may include references to beer. In my opinion, I tend to rate this Supervision Recommended.)
*Supervision Recommended: Only references to alcohol or drugs,
but not words like “cocaine, weed, heroin” ect. or direct acknowledgment to types of alcohol or alcohol brands. (For example, saying something like “sniffing snow”, “needle shot, or “blazing it” is fine as long as it’s not directly said what it is.)BearzUnlimited corrected me by saying the word “cocaine” was used in a Rock Band song. However, as cocaine has been censored, it’s odd to me why weed was censored in previous Rock Band tracks. Due to this contradiction, I believe even saying the drug name is allowed and won’t warrant a Mature Audience rating. As such, alcohol and drug references of any kind have a maximum of Supervision Recommended rather than Mature Audience rating._________________________________________________________________________
-Language
*Family Friendly: No swear words allowed with the exception of hell, damn and crap. (The phrase “God damn” may be debatable but in my opinion, “God damn” should be reserved for Supervision Recommended.)
*Supervision Recommended: Swear words are fine as long as it’s minimal and not the f-word. (The “n-word” may be debatable as some Teen rated games allow the word in the game, but in my opinion, since the player is singing the word, the “n-word” should only be reserved for Mature Audience.)
*Mature Audience:
Any swear word is allowed for as many times as the song includes them.
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-Morals / Themes
*Family Friendly: If the message is vague enough for no one, or if an adult understands the message vaguely enough for it not to be enough of a threat. Or if the message is not too mature for kids to learn.
*Supervision Recommended: If the message is implied that a child can understand it slightly. An adult may understand the lyrics fully and decide whether or not it’s appropriate for kids.
*Mature Audience: The message is very direct and not appropriate for any child.
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Last thing I’d like to note is genre of music. Typically, genre should not effect the age rating of a song as I’ve seen every song from every genre be rated either Family Friendly or Supervision Recommended. So you don’t need to take the style of music into account when rating a song.
These are the things I’ve listed so far, I may add more or change some things in the future according to feedback. So let me know what you think!
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This next paragraph has been updated to note album art and instrumentals. Usually, all instrumentals are deemed Family Friendly as there are no lyrical content. The only exception to this rule is the title of the song. If the title is deemed too innapropriate, then with would get a Supervision Recommended or even a Mature Audience rating. An example of this is in the song “Caprici di Diablo” with the insiuations of the Devil. As for album art, I don’t think I’ve seen examples where album art comes into play when deciding the rating. The song “The End of Heartache” by Killswitch Engage has a gory album art, yet has a Family Friendly rating. This leads me to believe Harmonix doesn’t intend album art to be a factor in deciding the rating for a song. I could be wrong though, that may be just one exception as I heard some songs have album arts removed or replaced in order to fit a Family Friendly rating.
(To my knowledge, no official Rock Band song directly say specific drugs and if they do, they censor it out. While I don’t agree to this kind of censorship, to make it true to Rock Band standards, these words should either be censored, or recieve a mature rating.)
I know this one exists, and I feel like it’s not the only example out there.
It would be really grotesque to censor any work of art when we don’t need to actually sell anything, which is the only reason the parental rating is used. There is no need at all to censor anything to make a custom “true to Rock Band standards”.
From my knowledge, extremely gory/graphic imagery would get Mature Audience ratings. HMX themselves said that Hammer Smashed Face by Cannibal Corpse went too far, so thinking anything like that or worse should get a Mature Audience rating.
And as mentioned, drugs have been mentioned in songs in the past without censorship, so making a song MA for drug references alone seems like a stretch. There are a few examples of HMX censoring drug references, though that feels more like them being unnecessarily safe, as opposed to a strict thing (and more likely, that’s just how they got the stems).
I know this one exists, and I feel like it’s not the only example out there.
ahh, I see. Thanks for the correction! The topic has been updated.
It would be really grotesque to censor any work of art when we don’t need to actually sell anything, which is the only reason the parental rating is used. There is no need at all to censor anything to make a custom “true to Rock Band standards”.
I myself am not a fan of censorship although in contrast, if the song has been lyrically altered instead of muted, I’d like that type of creativity rather than the lazy “mute the phrase” action. Ultimately, it is up to the charter on whether or not he or she decides to go for the censored version or the uncensored version. Best case scenario, there’s both version available.
Sometimes the Rock Band ratings by HMX are weird. There’s…I think a Police or a Who song where I cannot understand how it got a SR rating but for some reason Ozzy Osbourne’s “Soul Sucker” got a FF despite the lyrical content which, while isn’t exactly crass or violent, I wouldn’t want my 5 year old singing.
I know, I know, there are always exceptions but sometimes I feel like the littlest thing that sounds even minorly raunchy will be labeled SR so I like to give HMX crap about it.
As far as how I do it, I actually follow closely to BassSinger’s guide. It’s interesting how lyrical content doesn’t always follow song style. Most of the ZZ Top songs I have charted are definitely SR because they’re…well, you’ve heard them. “Got Me Under Pressure” has some innocent-sounding guitar riffs, something fun to play around the kids until you listen to the lyrics and learn it’s about Dusty’s domination fetish. On the other hand bands like The Hives, while the guitars are loud and the tempo is pretty fast the lyrics are almost always playful and kid-friendly.
There are some bands that have passed practically SR-free in Rock Band like Rush, Coldplay, and Boston. You never think about it but they never really put out songs that would generate an SR rating.
Because we have customs I prefer a song to be fully uncensored as the author intended. Disturbed’s “The Sickness” doesn’t quite have the emotional power because the whole abuse section was muted and Lamb of God’s “Laid to Rest” and Green Day’s “F.O.D.” is laughable because of how awkward the pauses are when they’re censored because of how prominent the words are in the song.
As BassSinger pointed out there are versions of songs with altered lyrics rather than mutes for the censored version. Tenacious D’s censored version of “Master Exploder” is like that and honestly I much prefer it to the uncensored version (don’t know why HMX didn’t use that version for the custom – guess they couldn’t obtain the stems).
There’s some awkward cutting also to remove profanity. Burnout Paradise “censored” Seether’s “Fake It” by cutting out the whole lyric (ex. they cut out the whole “I feel so raped” line and changed the last chorus lyric to “you’re such a hypocrite”). It was obvious some guy sat on Audacity and cut out the parts probably an hour or so before his shift ended and put it into the game. I actually think it sounds better that way but it’s a bit awkward especially for people who want to sing the song in its entirety so I wouldn’t do that for my customs.
Another unexpectedly long reply by yours truly.
One thing that still bugs me is that for every song in the Rock Band 2 export, they just slapped an SR rating on it regardless of the content. I get why – the ratings (I believe) were initially introduced just to determine what songs could be played in Lego: Rock Band, and you couldn’t export the RB2 songs into that game anyway. They didn’t bother to change it later on, so now innocent songs like [too lazy to check] are still marked as SR in RB3.
There’s some awkward cutting also to remove profanity. Burnout Paradise “censored” Seether’s “Fake It” by cutting out the whole lyric (ex. they cut out the whole “I feel so raped” line and changed the last chorus lyric to “you’re such a hypocrite”). It was obvious some guy sat on Audacity and cut out the parts probably an hour or so before his shift ended and put it into the game. I actually think it sounds better that way but it’s a bit awkward especially for people who want to sing the song in its entirety so I wouldn’t do that for my customs.
This reminds me of “Time and Time Again” in Burnout 3, where they muted the word “stuck” because it sounded like the word “fuck.” I mean, it did legitimately sound a lot like “fuck,” but it’s still kinda silly. The bigger problem is later on when they censored the phrase “pissed about being pissed.” Rather than just cut out the words in question, they just cut out the entire line (and the totally-clean line that followed it) out from the song, resulting in an awkward jump to the pre-chorus. Never mind that “pissed” is arguably a lesser (or equal) swear word to “damn” and “ass,” both of which appear uncensored elsewhere in the game.
This reminds me of “Time and Time Again” in Burnout 3, where they muted the word “stuck” because it sounded like the word “fuck.” I mean, it did legitimately sound a lot like “fuck,” but it’s still kinda silly. The bigger problem is later on when they censored the phrase “pissed about being pissed.” Rather than just cut out the words in question, they just cut out the entire line (and the totally-clean line that followed it) out from the song, resulting in an awkward jump to the pre-chorus. Never mind that “pissed” is arguably a lesser (or equal) swear word to “damn” and “ass,” both of which appear uncensored elsewhere in the game.
I bought Madden 16 a week or so ago and I’m laughing at how much they censor the lyrics in that game’s songs. There’s a Cadillac Three song where they censor “what she’s wearin'”, “heartache”, and “hottie”. I guess the last one is kinda derogatory but it’s still ridiculous. The game’s entire soundtrack is censored all over the place. I hadn’t played a Madden game since Madden 07 but as I recall that one had no censorship in their songs and they had stuff like “Woman” by Wolfmother. I guess the ESRB has gotten more strict?
On a similar note there’s a song by Between the Buried and Me called “Selkies: The Endless Obsession” (or as I wittily call it, “Selfies: The Endless Obsession”) has a lyric that’s written in the CD booklet as “Time to hate, kill, fuck, conquer” but for Tommy sings “hate, kill, fight, conquer”. It’s not censored in Rock Band but my friend is adamant he says “fuck” instead of “fight”. I told him Ozzy Osbourne’s “Hellraiser” is the same way. The booklet says the lyric is “nerves wound up too damn tight” but Ozzy clearly sings “too dang tight”. Silly booklets.
I was just about to mention Madden games. Madden 08 I believe has the song “Ex’s and Oh’s,” and any references to scars and bleeding (which would be metaphorical in this case) were censored, so you have such lyrics as:
“When you feel your soul drop to the floor
Like a whole like an open bleeding sore
Then you’ll have bleed like I’ve bled
Then you’ll have bled this all left”As:
“When you feel your soul drop to the floor
Like a whole like an open…
Then you’ll have,,,
Then you’ll have… this all left”Madden 07 probably censors some too. It’s been so long since I’ve played it I don’t remember. Music isn’t exactly vital to a Madden game so I can’t really give EA Sports crap for it. Gotta maintain the “E” rating!
Another thing on this topic that I’ve been pondering: Could a song receive a higher rating based on other aspects than the actual song itself, i.e. the origin of the song or the associated album art?
Some of the songs I released the other day in my visual novel pack came from soundtracks of games that are themselves rated 18+ for sexual content. One of them, Junshin na Hana Uranai, even contains a title drop to the game in question. The lyrics are innocent enough though and make no sexual references, so I went ahead and marked all songs FF. I might be overthinking it but on the other hand, music originating from pornographic content still feels rather odd to mark “family friendly”, even though there’s nothing wrong with the song itself.
As for album art, it feels like if the image contains violent or sexual content that should perhaps also be ground for raising the rating. After all, Harmonix have gone out of their way in the past not to use the original album art in some case (e.g. Nothing’s Shocking, which only shows up as a band logo in game). On the other hand, Party Hard isn’t altered in any way and the song shows up as FF in game, while I’d argue that the image is definitely not something I’d be expecting in family friendly material.
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