Family Friendly – Mature Audience Ratings, How to Determine Them?
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I might be overthinking it.
You mean you guys are overthinking something that only a business needs to care about because they have to follow rules to distribute their content otherwise they might get sued? Noooo, absolutely not, it’s a perfectly good amount of time to spend thinking about an entirely subjective matter that could be resolved by quickly going “Let’s see, is this generally ok for families? Meh, maybe not, let’s SR it; Yeah, all good; Definitely not, it’s M”.
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif”>You mean you guys are overthinking something that only a business needs to care about because they have to follow rules to distribute their content otherwise they might get sued? Noooo, absolutely not, it’s a perfectly good amount of time to spend thinking about an entirely subjective matter that could be resolved by quickly going “Let’s see, is this generally ok for families? Meh, maybe not, let’s SR it; Yeah, all good; Definitely not, it’s M”.
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” />Hey now, part of the fun when you’re working on a project as big as a custom is to spend way too much effort on the little things. Don’t get me started on difficulty ratings for songs, you’ll never get me to shut up
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_cheeky.001.gif” />Difficulty ratings is a very good thing to focus on, IMO, that is useful. I still wouldn’t stress about it since those are a bit subjective too, as HMX has proved, but a good thing to get right. Half a billion characters on something actually only a business needs to get as right as possible to avoid getting sued, with some made up medical words in it for some good measure, makes me think resources are being pulled from actual authoring to something of little importance on the whole. I would get “Hey guys, here’s a song I made, what do you think should be the rating?”, not a whole lot more since we have more or less 4,000 songs from HMX to use as guidance anyway.
I actually thought about this a bit, and I don’t think I saw it discussed, but what about in the event of instrumentals? Obviously, all of the rating comes from lyrics, so a song without any singing or spoken word or anything, automatically FF. However, there’s a few songs where I think that it’s a bit iffy, and wanted to get some insight on. These are songs that I picked and we charted, and there’s more examples, but these are the ones that came to mind first.
Carnivore – Five Billion Dead
Testament – Urotsukidoji
Tomoyasu Hotei – Kill the Target
I could be overthinking this, but I wasn’t 100% sure and figured it’d make sense to ask. For the first and last of those, they both have references to people dying, or killing someone, do the titles alone bump up the rating to SR? And for the middle one, it samples some *questionable* source material, and I wouldn’t want any kids looking it up, and finding something fucked up, you know? Or for every case, does them being instrumentals supersede that and make them FF still?
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.
I don’t think where the song comes from shouldn’t dictate the age rating. I’m currently working on a Metal Gear Rising Album Pack and while the original game came from an M rated one, most of the songs are pretty tamed, some even I’d consider Family Friendly. So I don’t think you need to worry about where the song came from, just what’s in the song.
Album art is a little more tricky. Harmonix has made alternate album covers for tracks that are family friendly, but album art is risque. In my personal opinion, I don’t think an album art should dictate the song’s rating, but I can see where the confusion lies.
I actually thought about this a bit, and I don’t think I saw it discussed, but what about in the event of instrumentals? Obviously, all of the rating comes from lyrics, so a song without any singing or spoken word or anything, automatically FF. However, there’s a few songs where I think that it’s a bit iffy, and wanted to get some insight on. These are songs that I picked and we charted, and there’s more examples, but these are the ones that came to mind first.
Carnivore – Five Billion Dead
Testament – Urotsukidoji
Tomoyasu Hotei – Kill the Target
I could be overthinking this, but I wasn’t 100% sure and figured it’d make sense to ask. For the first and last of those, they both have references to people dying, or killing someone, do the titles alone bump up the rating to SR? And for the middle one, it samples some *questionable* source material, and I wouldn’t want any kids looking it up, and finding something fucked up, you know? Or for every case, does them being instrumentals supersede that and make them FF still?
To my knowledge, unless the title of the song is too risque for a Family Friendly rating, all tracks with no vocals would be Family Friendly. Even if the song sounds tough or evil.
I’m actually of the opinion that the album art can affect a rating, even bringing it up as much as an M rating (one song that I helped released, “Do What Your Daddy Says” by Voltera, is an example due to nudity and gore). I do feel that it would be rather out of place to set a family friendly filter, perhaps wanting to keep things G-PG rated with the kids, and then seeing a naked torso with it’s limbs cut off. Though that’s just my opinion, I tend to think a lot about the small details no one technically has to think hard and long about
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_cheeky.001.gif” />To my knowledge, unless the title of the song is too risque for a Family Friendly rating, all tracks with no vocals would be Family Friendly. Even if the song sounds tough or evil.
That’s what I thought for some time too, but Caprici di Diablo received a SR sticker, and the only things I could think of as to why were the title of the song (which apparently translates to Devil’s Caprice or Devil’s Whim) and maybe how ominous the song is made to sound.
While we’re on the subject of instrumentals, the title of an instrumental I’ve charted is Siege Engine, which references a weapon used in warfare. Again, given how there’s that much less material to work with, I wasn’t too sure how to approach this. My initial gut was to put a SR sticker on it. What do you think?
I like pop, I like soul, I like rock, but I never liked disco.
That’s what I thought for some time too, but Caprici di Diablo received a SR sticker, and the only things I could think of as to why were the title of the song (which apparently translates to Devil’s Caprice or Devil’s Whim) and maybe how ominous the song is made to sound.
While we’re on the subject of instrumentals, the title of an instrumental I’ve charted is Siege Engine, which references a weapon used in warfare. Again, given how there’s that much less material to work with, I wasn’t too sure how to approach this. My initial gut was to put a SR sticker on it. What do you think?
With Caprici di Diablo, I always thought it was “Dance with the Devil,” which I personally don’t think is enough for an SR rating, but I guess HMX thought it was a bit much. As for Siege Engine, references to weapons (though mostly medieval, such as “sword in his hand” in “Cry Thunder” by DragonForce) have been in FF-rated songs, so I think it should be fine.
While we’re on the subject of instrumentals, the title of an instrumental I’ve charted is Siege Engine, which references a weapon used in warfare. Again, given how there’s that much less material to work with, I wasn’t too sure how to approach this. My initial gut was to put a SR sticker on it. What do you think?
We’re starting to overthink this a bit. Most instrumentals are going to be FF unless there’s an explicit title or album art.
I think this forum has sufficiently covered all exceptions to the rating system.
Is it okay to upload multiple entries to the database if planning to chart different content rating versions?
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