Your opinion needed: Maturity Ratings for avatar skins

[Ghaelen DLareh]

For me, the moderate rating is more about the customer or a person with moderate settings browsing the marketplace and wearing the skins than it is about protecting our rears if we supervise children. I see a number of variables that make Option C viable: (edit - new patches arrived after I posted).

Teenagers will be wearing these skins. (Cautious) business people at meetings will/might be wearing these skins. If they lose their clothes and the world sees their "patches", what will their reaction be? I expect that for some it would be relief that at least they thought to wear a skin with patches. If they buy a skin that looks like it has patches and it ends up being see-through (which makes said customer VERY unhappy) what are the consequences for the seller/Kitely? These would be the only questions for me.

I don't think full bikini (top or bottom) should be mandatory, and let supply/demand dictate to designers what moderate-ratings customers want. So the patches are fine, as long as they actually cover what would totally embarrass the person who trusted their coverage.

[Dot Matrix]

As Ilan mentioned, to help with this discussion, Sierra has helpfully made patches with different amounts of coverage for "Moderate" and "General" rated skins. Images of these can now be viewed in the Market here: http://www.kitely.com/market/product/30 ... ty-Patches

While minimum coverage for "General" seems to have been settled, that for "Moderate" is still being discussed.

Personal opinion: For female Moderate-rated skins, Mod Upper C and Mod Lower C would be the minimum I'd be comfortable with, I think. However, I'm not qualified to say whether this would be appropriate for unsupervised teens aged 13+, and likewise (more generally) for male Moderate-rated skins. But if a glitch happened in a businesslike gathering, I'd probably be less embarrassed if the poor chap had at least Mod Lower A modesty patch.

[Serendipity Seraph]

Mature rating must allow you to see display in ads at least as much as you can on Amazon or can see in a Victoria Secrets catalog. Also there should be no maturity based restrictions on doing anything you wish in less public spaces in your region that may only have a "Mature" rating. I don't think skins showing a nipple should really be something we worry at all about in the marketplace as long as they have an M or A rating.

[Serendipity Seraph]

The Maturity Ratings are messed up. Adult is described as worlds with nudity or violence. Yet Moderate precludes even nudity or sexual activity behind closed doors. Even having furniture or clothes or animations that are rated Adult has been said to be forbidden and perhaps enforced by code in the future. But many of us want Moderate to be more like what is and is not acceptable in public in most of the developed world and stuff behind "closed doors" to be whatever the adults involved agree to. This is how our real world is and it is by default how we expect to conduct ourselves in virtual worlds. We aren't often after public nudity or especially not violence simply to be in our virtual world as we would expect to be. So at the very least either Moderate needs to be less restrictive or a "Mature" rating between "Moderate" and "Adult" needs adding or "Adult" needs to be described rather differently and in a less harsh manner. Else many people will simply not be able to enter our worlds where we are "allowed" to be our normal civilized selves because they didn't sign up for public nudity or for violence. This very much needs to be fixed.

[Serendipity Seraph]

It sounds as if the real question is not "what do we think it should be?", or "what makes sense?", but rather "what is safe for the business?"

Please explain to me what you can be sued for if a Moderate rated skin in Kitely marketplace shows a nipple. A world where nothing is allowed but what offends no one would in any case be an extremely boring world.

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Serendipity,

We will add clarifications about what each of the maturity ratings mean.

[Serendipity Seraph]

Hi Serendipity,

We will add clarifications about what each of the maturity ratings mean.

Thanks. Do you understand my objection to the big gap between a very tightly limited Moderate and the current definition of Adult? I think it is too large a gap without enough nuance for many people.

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Serendipity,

I understand your objection but there isn't much I can do about it. Your definition of mundane mature behavior (e.g. taking a shower in the nude inside your world) falls into the Adult category in several of our main target markets. It is completely irrelevant whether I agree with you on the subject or not, we still need to be able to service people from those countries and that means complying with the laws of their land. Luckily, all we currently need to do is have questionable (maturity rating-wise) content be labeled Adult and limit access to adult content to people who are at least 18 year old.

[Serendipity Seraph]

Hi Serendipity,

I understand your objection but there isn't much I can do about it. Your definition of mundane mature behavior (e.g. taking a shower in the nude inside your world) falls into the Adult category in several of our main target markets. It is completely irrelevant whether I agree with you on the subject or not, we still need to be able to service people from those countries and that means complying with the laws of their land. Luckily, all we currently need to do is have questionable (maturity rating-wise) content be labeled Adult and limit access to adult content to people who are at least 18 year old.

So you will have to decide which countries are really worth servicing relative to the hassles and impositions on your users and products that servicing them will entail. That is a decision only you guys can make and I certainly have no problem with you making it. I just hope whatever it is that it is one I can live with and that enough people I want to share this community with can live with.

With that I will ease up on this subject. I've said my piece (at least).

[Ilan Tochner]

Thank you Serendipity