Jump to content

A question regarding dst's age rating


Recommended Posts

Hello, new thread.

So can someone who is knowleadgeable in this tell me how far can dst go with its current age rating?

How bad can the survivors swear? Is gore and blood (to some degree) allowed?

As references I'll use:

-Willow says 'Holy crap'

-Tentacles are sliced in half when killed 

-Wilson cut his hand cuz blood was required (may be irrelevant since it's from the old trailer)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Warly has 1 instance of "Damn" in his line for getting hit by a boomerang:

ANNOUNCE_BOOMERANG = "Ouch! Damnable thing!",

 

No instances for anything else I could come up with, except for Willow saying crap.

Though, I did find this from Maxwell:
FEATHERHAT = "I always considered myself the peacock of people.",

image.thumb.png.fc4c219ba25f1e4573f97650f6105897.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i wouldn't be concerned about language when there is a hissing grue that attacks you from the inside out to kill you x''D i am a grown man and i find that pretty unsettling. a child could be mentally harmed by something like that if they have a less solid grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality(or are afraid of the dark as many children are)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From my experience in pubs i can say ive seen people from 13 to 30+ years old. And ive seen MANY people on boths ends. I don't see as many 13yo on the forums though.

I must say it's pretty rare and amazing the direction the game has since it's both appropiate for both younger and older people. I've even seen people on their 40s playing and posting about it on Reddit.

Altough we've been lately receiving material more oriented towards the young audience, i think we can't blame them for that, after all there's lots of young people playing the game too!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, Brubs said:

From my experience in pubs i can say ive seen people from 13 to 30+ years old. And ive seen MANY people on boths ends. I don't see as many 13yo on the forums though.

I must say it's pretty rare and amazing the direction the game has since it's both appropiate for both younger and older people. I've even seen people on their 40s playing and posting about it on Reddit.

Altough we've been lately receiving material more oriented towards the young audience, i think we can't blame them for that, after all there's lots of young people playing the game too!

I agree. PG 13 is probs the appropriate rating. Many elements of the swamp at night, insanity or the ruins for instance can be a bit scary for younger children.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Szczuku said:

-Wilson cut his hand cuz blood was required (may be irrelevant since it's from the old trailer)

Fun fact, this was omitted from the console versions of the Forbidden Knowledge trailer. (The knife cut is removed and Wilson instead drips some purple substance into the vial.)

So I'd say gore and blood is allowed to an extent, but not overstepping any boundaries, i.e. self harm or excessive gore.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think with movies, it's PG-13 that's allowed one precious F-bomb.  A good example I can think of right now would be "X-Men First Class", in which Wolverine's ONE line is like the most precision F-strike I've ever seen, and it's glorious.  But I don't think that'd fit DST, and I also don't know if Teen in games is the equivalent of PG-13 in movies or not.

13-year-olds?  Oh HAYELL naw that ain't as young as it goes . One of the earlier strangers I played with back in 2016 was a SEVEN YEAR OLD. Seven.  From the Phillipines (mainly because I keep weird hours for an American, so I keep getting people from way far away playing on my servers, when I leave them open).  Teaching him about the game through an impatience/immaturity AND language barrier was...interesting.  Let's just say, this was when I started putting up signs by the bee-boxes.  ("These flowers are for BEE USE ONLY.  Do not pick.  Signed, The Management.")  

I've seen kidlets (as in ten and younger) on public servers, multiple times. You can often tell because they tend to play Webber (sorry, but it's kinda true) and if they're the host they will use the console to cheat in all the cool stuff NOW!! because they don't yet know that earning things over time in a game is more satisfying.  Impatient prankster giggly Spiderboys MIGHT mean an actual kid...or they could mean a 40-year-old idiot who thinks he's funny.  But sometimes it's a legit kid.

As for the gore...I was always okay with Wilson cutting his hand in the original trailer ('cos that's SO traditional for that kind of magic, and as a long-time fantasy fan I'm used to that) but you know what throws me off?  THE HORROR HOUNDS.  Still frelling hate them.  _They are too much mouth_.  I'm apparently okay with SOME darker stuff but body horror is where I'm like, "Check please!"

...Notorious

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Wumpus the 19th said:

so long as the internet exists as it is and klei doesn't apply extreme censure to the game's chat, no game with online chat will ever get a younger rating than a raunchy M rating.

That's why many games have the disclaimer: "ONLINE INTERACTIONS NOT RATED BY THE ESRB" (or whatever other game rating systems exist out there). 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mean, there isn't that much content that is unsafe for kids. It's pretty violent, and the nightmare creatures can be scary for young kids. But other than that I don't see a problem.

But, moreover, if a kid is young enough that the slight gore and small curse words are something to be concerned over, then they are probably too young to be playing. They probably wouldn't even find this game very fun, either, as it is a bit difficult, even for experienced players.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Wumpus the 19th said:

so long as the internet exists as it is and klei doesn't apply extreme censure to the game's chat, no game with online chat will ever get a younger rating than a raunchy M rating.

You must not know the extremities Microsoft goes through to keep Xbox live a safe and clean environment.. there is A LOT you can’t say, well uhm you can say- but if you do expect to get a nice little communications ban for a little while.

Its quite ridiculous to get a ban when talking to someone on a mature rated game like Grand Theft Auto Online.. but well kids flock there even though there’s some obviously extreme content within that game, including but not just limited to nudity.

Dont Starve on the other hand is rated 13 and up and I find it slightly ridiculous that it remains as “child friendly” as it is.

I mean MINECRAFT a game actually rated E and intended for children has more mature content in certain places.. 

Klei is starting to change that NOW with Horror Hound and Zombie Pengul but doesn’t change the facts that in Minecraft- a game rated E and intended for everyone you can “literally” build a portal into that games equivalent of Hell, and go be torn apart by Zombie Pigmen.. 

Speaking of hell, I forget which one.. but one of the characters in DST when caught on fire will yell out “Ouch Hel’s Fire!”
I believe it is Wigfrid.. but I’m not certain. Hel (and not Hell) is a Mythical God, so yeah I’m going to guess it’s one of Wigfrid lines.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wendy makes somewhat frequent reference to Hell in its capacity as a place of postmortem torment and flame, rather than as a generic swear word. She calls a fully fuelled campfire "A vision of Hell!" and an equivalent endothermic fire "A vision of a frozen-over Hell!", says "Ow! Fires of Hell!" when putting out a smoldering item, says "It burns with the fires of Hell." in reference to lavae, and her examine quote for a burnt tent or siesta lean-to is "A preview of the fires of Hell." So that's the high-water mark on swearing in DS, I suppose.

For reference, while Steam doesn't require an ESRB rating, the console versions of both DST and DS singleplayer are rated T. According to the ESRB website, "infrequent use of strong language" is allowed at a Teen rating but it doesn't go into much detail about which words or how often, so it's probably similar to PG-13 movies in that respect. "Minimal blood" is also allowed, and just plain "violence", as opposed to E10 which can only have "cartoon, fantasy or mild violence". ("Intense violence" and "blood and gore" are only allowed in M-rated games. However, a T-rated game can include violence that involves "bloodless dismemberment".) "Crude humor" starts at a T rating, so it's entirely possible that DS would have been rated E10 if it didn't have so many sources and uses of manure; the violence is pretty tame (everything just kinda flinches when it gets hit and then falls over dead after taking enough hits, the player included), E10 allows "mild language", and there's no sexual content to speak of in the game. But since they are already rated T, Klei probably could add somewhat more detailed violence or more swearing without having to raise the rating any further, I just don't think they want to.

Supernatural, psychological, and implied horror, like the lore surrounding Them and Charlie and Maxwell's backstory, and unsettling monster designs like the lunar island mutants are the kind of thing that's difficult to incorporate into age-rating systems because different children of the same age will have wildly different reactions to them. Some will be indifferent to or not even notice the aspects that scare adults, some will think it's cool and interesting, and others will have nightmares at the mere suggestion. I'm not surprised that there's no official ESRB content descriptor for any of that stuff, because it's very subjective and context-dependent.

I wouldn't have a problem with a primary-school-aged or middle-school-aged child I was responsible for playing the singleplayer game or a private DST server where I could be reasonably confident no one was going to say cruel or obscene things to them, if they weren't otherwise scared of fantasy monsters, the general concept of animal-vs-animal or human-vs-animal violence, or creepy environments such as the deep ruins. Wendy frequently talking about how she wishes she was dead could also be a problem, depending on the kid, but that's the kind of thing that can be handled by having a serious conversation about it if it seems to be troubling them. I think it's mostly preschoolers who have genuine and pervasive difficulty distinguishing between things that happen in cartoons or fantasy stories and things that can happen in the real world; I recall reading that by age 7 most kids understand the difference between fiction and non-fiction.

A kid might struggle with the difficulty curve, though, yeah. God knows I died ignominiously before I could make much progress several times when I first picked this game up, and I was 23. When I was 10 I was both worse at video games and had a lower tolerance for frustration.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, CameoAppearance said:

Wendy makes somewhat frequent reference to Hell in its capacity as a place of postmortem torment and flame, rather than as a generic swear word. She calls a fully fuelled campfire "A vision of Hell!" and an equivalent endothermic fire "A vision of a frozen-over Hell!", says "Ow! Fires of Hell!" when putting out a smoldering item, says "It burns with the fires of Hell." in reference to lavae, and her examine quote for a burnt tent or siesta lean-to is "A preview of the fires of Hell." So that's the high-water mark on swearing in DS, I suppose.

Wendy ALSO makes references to...um...how would I put it if I was trying to wimpily pussyfoot around all of YouTube's demonetization triggers, aka, almost every friggin' word ever?  Ah yes.  "Comitting not-alive."  Like, if you have her look at a rope, she says "That would be the easy way out."

...

DUDE!

Also "Hel" as Wigfrid says it is a Norse mythology reference, and because I'm a ginourmous mythology nerd I'm'a also say here that Hel is the goddess of the (neutral) underworld and is Loki's daughter, a half-alive, half-dead girl.  But that's actually kinda on the milder side for how messed-up Loki's family can get*... 

As for the M-rating of chats...I've had problems with that in my own server's chats, and after one ESPECIALLY bad incident (let's just say it involved a direct threat of sexual assault on a female player and my keeping the hell out of the chat records to send them into the Steam authorities, 'cos I didn't know what else to do) I now have a ZERO tolerance policy on that.  Problem is, people don't believe that until I outright kick them, 'cos, without the server being named after my username, _they don't know I'm the admin_...So they don't take my "I MEAN it, stop with the pedo (beep) NOW!" comments seriously...until bop! gone.  

Spoiler

I have a higher tolerance for other stuff, though, including I allow all kinds of casual swearing of the type that'd get a post instantly censored and/or the user banned for at least a good while _here_, as long as you're not directing it AT another player. The only stuff I censor for is general...buttholery, such as blatant bigotry, grossness, genitalishness towards other players/the base as a whole, or underage...comments.  You can say The Real F Word all you want on my server, as long as it's in a lighthearted way, but...I honestly feel the stuff I DO censor is the stuff that's gonna mess up a kid much worse in the future.

So what I'm saying is that a public-allowed server that's _run by an actual person_ and only runs when they're playing, CAN in fact have some form of standards.  It's only the REALLY Wild-West ones, the 24-hour ones that nobody ever watches at all, you gotta watch out for...

...Notorious

*Look up Sleipnir's origin story sometime.  Mythology is...interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...