Asking about age ratings...?

[OtomeWeekend]

I'm not very familiar with age ratings so before I go and post my wip, I just thought I'd ask about the age rating for now.

Um, if the vn contains a great amount of swearing, should i rate it 15+ or doesn't matter. My heroine happens to be quite a bad-mouthed one(or rather, I wrote her as a bad mouthed one) and now I'm confused on how the hell am I suppose to shove it to the net now. If cursing is involve, what is the normal age rating for it?(or does it even need a rating? In here, I can hear kids cursing even to elders just fine but I'm not making a japanese game but an english one so I need advice from them :'D )

[Anna]

Age ratings are seriously all over the place, depending on what system you use. Whatever you may use, just be sure to put behind the age-rating why you're giving it that. So, something like:

16+: swearing, suggested adult themes, etc.

One of my characters had that swearing problem too, but I rated it 12+. Some games did that too, yet some others I've seen immediately use 16+ just because of swearing, so... *shrug*.

[Greeny]

I don't think people care that much.

[kaleidofish]

I don't think people care that much.

For anyone that would care, put a warning in the thread about it if you feel the swearing is extreme enough, as Anna suggested. I personally wouldn't care very much. 5th grade (10 years old) was when everyone stopped freaking out over cursing - prior to that, everyone would run and tell the teacher. So yeah, even in America, kids as young as 10 are cursing (not in front of "grown ups" though).

[redeyesblackpanda]

I asked something similar a while back, and it seems that content warnings are more important and relevant, since age ratings can vary so much.
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =4&t=13412

[Tsundere Lightning]

Warn for specific content; don't provide an age rating if you can get away with it. The single exception to this is explicit sexual content, which by California law (at least) cannot be sold to anyone under the age of 18. There is literally no other exception to this which I would put a hard age minimum on.

[saguaro]

You probably don't need to rate/warn unless you're dropping s- and f-bombs.