Not "extreme sexual content", just "sexually explicit". It is still subjective, but personally I think it's much easier to judge consistently if it's a simple yes/no.

Defining "extreme violence" is also going to be difficult, but as almost every mud includes violence you could use it to refer to games that take it a clear step further.

I think it's also important to decide whether these will be options the mud owner can choose to click (i.e., based on their own opinion), or whether they'll be enforced by some sort of auditing group.




But some muds take it a step further. Some of the violence in my own game can be very graphic, for example (I could provide some examples if you wish).



I'd suggest basing it primarily on coded support, and secondarily on policy. As I mentioned before, the GodWars codebase has a very explicit xsocial system (including coded support for pregnancy and childbirth). In other muds, mudsex via emotes is considered a 'normal' activity, and I'd tend to consider those "sexually explicit" as well.

I'm not so fond of DavidHaley's suggestion that "For sexual content, "light" might mean kissing and petting", as that would include every mud with a "kiss" social, even if you were to ignore the "emote" command.



Agreed (don't forget coffee and beer, either). On the other hand, a modern day mud where the players could inject themselves with heroin and/or sell it to teenager MOBs should probably have some sort of adult classification.



I don't think you'd have a problem, particularly if it's made clear that the listing information is just a subjective best-guess. Likewise, I can't see someone suing you for advertising an "extended class selection" when you've actually only got 4 classes.

Definitely it should be made apparent on any site that said ratings would apply that the rating applies to the coded and Administration supported/maintained aspects of the game, and a disclaimer stating that since the game is open to Human interactivity and said interactivity can't always be monitored and moderated, the Administration makes no claim as to how the ratings would apply to individual behavior.

I also suppose we shouldn't "force" MUDs to participate, but I think some incentive, encouragement, or preference shown in the listings would be a good way to encourage people to participate.




I'm thinking that an honor system should be good enough. On a site this small in regards to the MUD listings, auditing might be feasible, but if we were able to convince this to apply across most of the MUD Listing sites, then that would be a very tiresome task. If the administration of any of the sites cared to check into reports of falsified information, then so be it, but perhaps I'm being a bit cynical in thinking that it would be highly unlikely you would have a sizable group enough of volunteers that would do this out of the goodness of their heart.

Agreed, this is a very important 'detail' that makes a world of difference. While I'm not advocating a auditing group, if we leave it up to the admins posting the listing to decide which checkboxes apply, we'll get vastly differing opinions about the meanings of the checkboxes.


I know that on my own mud, we strive to keep thing "kid safe" but we still have emotes and even some suggestive socials, they came with the codebase and I've never seen a reason to remove them as I feel they're "PG" enough, but how would someone else see them?

I've found some people offended by many of the stock Rom socials, such as goose, tie, etc. and since the point of my game isn't to give a more interactive means of cybering, I've erred on the side of caution. Particularly considering that the Final Fantasy theme could logically draw in a younger audience, I've felt it important to not escalate any of the 'adult' material above what was Stock. Perhaps the most non-kid-safe thing in the game is our Bloody Mess merit, which upon killing an enemy, there is a good chance they'll drop numerous body parts instead of the just the one on occasion. Otherwise, you see the 'Your slash OBLITERATES a generic citizen! [140]' but even with bloody mess, I wouldn't find that to be graphic violence.

Of course, we still have emotes, and the Inn system I coded does allow for renting a room out for a limited number of people (1, 2, or group), and since it isn't our policy to spy on our player base to keep certain behavior down, I can't assure people that everyone will act PG.

One of our rules is "No offensive behavior/speech in public rooms or public channels." and while that surely is vague and subjective, it is intended a deterrent toward cursing or sexual content in places that other people can see it.

Exactly, you do what you can, and you make rules about what can be seen in "public" and hope that if it bothers someone in private they'll let you know so you can intervene or at least try to avoid it in the future, but you can't (don't want to) monitor everyone constantly and you don't want to completely kill even the stock socials and the ability to emote just because it could be abused.

This statement seems to be based on the assumption that being hit with a "light sexual content" rating would be a bad thing. The point of a rating system is to give people fair warning about what they might find on a server, not just in terms of what's available but as I previously discussed the generally accepted behavior. If you're going to have a rating system in the first place (which is admittedly not a given) then you have to play by the rating system and not skirt the ratings. Again, it's pretty clear that we want to distinguish between the extremes of "none" (i.e. kid-friendly) and "a very great deal" ('adult-only'). I'm not sure why you object so strongly to having a middle ground.

And again, I believe an honor system is enough; an unnoticed violation is basically unimportant, and a noticed violation will be, well, noticed, and therefore likely to be reported or at least mentioned.

It's based on the assumption that the rating is supposed to actually help distinguish between different muds. If every single mud in the listings is going to have at least a "light sexual content" rating, why even bother including it? Why not, instead, just draw attention to those muds with more than light sexual content?



You have a nasty habit of putting words in my mouth. What I said was "I'm not so fond of DavidHaley's suggestion". The reason I'm not so fond of your suggestion is that it lumps almost every mud into a category which misleading implies sexual overtones.

Imagine categorising the 'language' rating in the same way:

(1) Non-racist: No bad language or racists remarks are possible.
(2) Slightly-racist: Some remarks may occur, but will be dealt with by staff.
(3) Moderately-racist: Offensive remarks may be dealt with.
(4) Heavily-racist: No censoring or punishment for racist remarks.

So now any mud which has public channels would have to be listed as at least "slightly-racist", and if they didn't monitor the channels they'd end up as "moderately-racist".

Like your proposal for sexual content, the above would be technically accurate, but would list the muds in a negative light. Many people won't want to list their muds as 'racist' just because it's possible for a player to chat a racist comment over the public channels - and equally, many people won't want to list their muds as having sexual content just because they have a 'kiss' social or an emote command.

This distinction is particularly important if you want to rely on some sort of honour system, because you'll actually be discouraging people from being honest. If you want the categories to actually be of any benefit at all, you need them to be at least vaguely accurate. Your proposal will not achieve that.

Because not every MUD has at least a light sexual content. Conner's "kid friendly" MUDs are a good example.


I disagree with your categorization. We've already said that one cannot expect an online game to be able to police things before they are said; therefore, your "slightly" category should actually be in the "none" category. The point isn't so much in what happens, but in what is allowed (or encouraged) by the game's administration or community.

Same for sexual content. You will never be able to completely prevent somebody from writing pr0n over the public channels. But how you deal with somebody who does will define what your "rating" should be.

Violence is a little different because it is inherent in the game mechanics. If the game creatures themselves engaged in sexual activity, that would also count as the mechanics.

Basically, a rating should reflect:
1- what the game mechanics are (socials are a funny beast; they kind of fall into category 2 below)
2- what the accepted community actions are
3- how admins deal with incidents

In other words, just because you have a kiss social doesn't mean you have light sexual content. It depends on how (and if) it is actually used, and to what extent it is tolerated. For example, two players could go off into a private corner and do whatever they want; the public face of the MUD is still "no sexual content here".

It's important to understand my proposal in terms of how I have been framing it, not in terms of the categorization you have given which is not appropriate for these ratings. Otherwise, clearly, it doesn't make any sense at all and achieves a negative result, I agree.

I honestly don't know what to say at this point. I'm pretty sure even Conner's MUD has the kiss social, and by your categories David, that would make even his kid safe MUD fall under lightly sexual or whatever it was.

However, I think I'm going to have to toss my vote in with the simple "couple of checkboxes for "Extreme violence" and "Sexually explicit"." as KaVir put it.

Hey, we even have the vbite social!

Social: vbite

CNoArg: You bare your fangs.
ONoArg: $n bares $s fangs and peers around nonchalantly.
CFound: You sensually brush $N's neck with your lips before sucking $S blood!
OFound: $n softly brushes $N's neck with $s lips, and then BITES!
VFound: $n bites your neck! Ouchhhh!
CAuto : Now, if you could bite your own neck..I'd worry.
OAuto : $n is in danger of hurting $mself.

By that one alone, my relatively kid safe mud now qualifies as extreme sexual and extreme violence right? :sad:

Did you read my post responding to KaVir? I explicitly said there why what you just said wouldn't be true…

To restate the point briefly, in case that helps:

1. It doesn't make sense to judge a MUD primarily on its dynamic content (e.g. people using socials). This is due to the inherently multiplayer nature of the game: somebody can, at any time, come along and say something "bad".

2. It makes more sense to judge the MUD based on how its admins deal with somebody saying something "bad". If it's accepted, then it isn't really bad according to that MUD.

3. Unavoidable game mechanics such as fountains of blood and gore during combat should also count towards a rating. Note the difference between these and socials. A social requires another person; the game mechanic can be just you.

I hope this helps clear things up a bit…

Okay, now I'm confused. You're saying that implementing a "kiss" social doesn't give the mud a "light sexual content" rating - instead, the mud only gets the rating if the players use that social?

That is a truly bizarre way to define it. It's no different from saying that a mud with a gory combat system can be classified as "no violence" as long as the players don't use it.



Firstly, the kiss social is a game mechanic.

Secondly, it is indeed possible to use 'kiss' socials on yourself in many muds (depending on the exact implementation). The same is not true of combat - combat almost always requires another person.

As I said, as for all online games, it makes sense to judge the MUD, for many things, based on what is tolerated by the community and administration. The point is that even if you removed all socials but left emotes, people would be able to do the relevant actions. And yes, it is indeed no different from the combat thing: if it is there, but nobody uses it and it is heavily frowned upon – e.g., admins intervene and stop fights –, I don't think it should warrant a rating.

As for combat: combat requires a mob; presumably if there is combat in the game, there are also mobs. You don't necessarily need another player to see combat. And presumably, it is not the MUD's business to rate what you do with yourself, as you could say all kinds of wild and crazy things to yourself too…

The point here is that a rating should reflect the general and average experience when playing a game, not every last thing there. Exceptions like somebody walking up and emoting something should not be taken into consideration.

They would, but the emote command is a general tool that can be used for any number of purposes, while the 'kiss' social is specifically there to let players kiss people, and can't actually be used for anything else. It's a major difference of intent.



I disagree. A mud which lets players perform detailed sexual acts should be rated as 'sexually explicit'. The fact that players can also choose to perform those acts on themselves or on beastly fidos, and thus "don't necessarily need another player to see" them, shouldn't have any impact on the rating.

It'd be like me listing my mud as "no violence" based on the fact that you can choose to spend your entire time sitting in your home plane chatting with other players, and therefore avoid exposure to combat.



Once again I disagree. A mud which tolerates players occasionally having graphically described mudsex in the market square should be classified as sexually explicit, even if that isn't the "general and average experience". The rating should reflect the most extreme experience, just as it does for movies, computer games, and so on.

I just want to say I am against a rating system being instituted, and especially any system that penalizes a game for not taking part in it (or provides incentives to only games that do take part). It will do little to nothing for the games, except provide more fodder for arguements over which games are "lying" or "cheating".

If a MUD wants to rate their own game they can do so in their own text submissions and reviews of the game they operate, or even seek a rating from an independant organization, like the ESRB.

It doesn't seem like there is a way to accurately, effectively rate MUD submissions in a way that enough people seem to agree on.

A MUD is a dynamic place where much of the content is generated by the players and their behavior. Books, movies, and TV shows can be rated by a system knowing exactly what the content of those materials will contain. I see no point in offering a complex rating system for any MUD where I can login and use an emote, public channel, or whatever to engage in whatever questionable behavior I choose, whether it be within the rules of the MUD or not.

I might be inclined to add an optional rating textbox for MUD submissions to allow the administrator(s) to rate in their own words, as they see fit, what a potential player can expect regarding the "norms" on their MUD.

(Edited for typos)

But see, exactly, we're back to the question of what is tolerated. I believe that acts that can be performed right in the middle of market square and are tolerated by the admins fall under the general experience of the game…

In any case it seems at the moment that it might be worth some time to rethink what a rating system would be providing in the first place so that the discussion could be refocused. I have the impression that we're uselessly going in circles… Perhaps Asylumius's suggestion is best and a rating system should simply be discarded altogether and be limited to some descriptions.

A sort of case in point:

I directed a co-worker of mine to TMC because he wanted to search for classless MUDs. He used the "Advanced Search" page and clicked classless. Not looking for teh pr0n, he also clicked [not] adult oriented. I told him to leave that blank anyway. A lot of MUDs on TMC have the "Sexually-Oriented and Adult-Level Violence" set. This is kind of misleading because in the search, it sort of sounds (to me and at least one other person) that the search criteria implies those MUDs are "adult oriented" in the same sense that an "adult" movie is porn (or contains explicit sex scenes).

A lot of rating systems would probably be misleading as well. Any MUD provides the opportunity for levels of sexual content and violence as graphic as the imagination of it's players, but branding them as such probably isn't going to be beneficial.

A MUD could be rated "PG" or "Kid Friendly" and so long as it supports a say command even, some prick can "tell" a player (maybe a minor, who knows) any sexually explicit thing he desires. It doesn't really matter at this point what the admins will tolerate and/or how they will handle it, because once it happens the rating system is useless. For this reason, we would all have to rate our MUDs as to contain at least SOME potential for even the most disturbing content.

Hmm, would a mud admin/staff be liable for someone with multiple personality disorder (or at least, someone multiplaying) getting offended by what their alt's alt said to them in chat? :lol:


That really might be the best approach.


And this is the real crux of the problem. In most games that carry an ESRB rating, it's not so much an issue because, even if it's multiplayer the developers can still control what the actual content of the game is and the rating can be based on that content so what people choose to do in the game afterward is their own fault, but because a mud is purely textual anything a player says, emotes, etc in the game is still the same text as the game content itself and thus the game developers really can't fully control the content nor fairly base a rating on just their own provided content. The other side of the problem is, as this discussion has (or should've by now) clearly demonstrated, that most of us wouldn't really want to "rate" our muds nor have them rated independantly because it'd be bad for our "business" because despite our best intentions, most of our games would end up with much harsher ratings than we'd like to admit. Muds are, generally, inherently violent games with a huge potential for adult content in the sense of drugs, violence, sexuality, and so forth depending on how you define each of these terms an the definitions that movies use would qualify most of our muds as NC-17 or R in a best case scenario just because the games themselves are usually based around combat and role play that can be influenced by factors outside our own control, and despite what rules we may choose to enforce, the actions usually have to happen before we can intervene. …in short, it's probably best if we stick to the older standard or simply advertising that we're adult-oriented or kid friendly or whatever because that's what we're aiming for rather than because we present opportunities for abuse of what's in our game or because we acknowledge that we feature vampire races that can drink from blood fountains that anyone could encounter or because our combat often ends with a mob leaving behind a body part and pool of blood.