Been in jail the past few days.

[Saefinn]

The fact you can’t see the difference between murder and rape in a story and an actual human being saying it to another is quite worrying. There’s murder in The Lion King. Doesn’t mean a grown adult should be encouraging 5 year olds to trample each other to death.

And what tends to make the difference in ratings is how it's presented.
And heck, the younger you get in target audience the more implicit you have to get, even down to the level of just metaphors, because Disney, we know that Aladdin's magic carpet ride was a metaphor for sex.

[StormyFae]

No, its not.

This seems to be a common missunderstanding - the whole "Online interactions not rated by the ESRB"-thing does not mean that you can behave however you want. Its simply a "disclaimer" to protect the ESRB so that parents cant blame (or even sue) them if their child ends up in creepy or just inapproriate online interactions.

I know its gotten "meme-status" by now, but to quote from the ToS that you agreed to when you first started playing this game:


So, even though the ESRB cant rate online interactions, SE makes it very clear in their ToS that they want all online interactions to be "teen-friendly". Probably because they made sure that their game would be rated "teen" by the ESRB (and similar organisations in other countries) so that they would have a larger customer/playerbase. If you dont behave accordingly, you're out - thats the deal, thats what you agreed to.

So, despite the online interactions not been rated by the ESRB, I'd say parents can have the reasonable expectation that the game - including online interactions - is going to be alright for their teens to play. And we should all play it with the expecations that teens are around - and that we'll get punished if we dont behave accordingly, since thats what we agreed to before we even set foot into Eorzea.

People really need to understand that and stop arguing that just because "Online interactions not rated by the ESRB" they dont need to behave like their are potentially minors around.



Nah, its not to protect SE, its to protect the ESRB.

SE is protected by the ToS.

just going to say this last thing but swaring honestly .. shouldn't even be there hell must 10 year olds sware more than anyone else lol if you really think that its not reasonable to do that around 13 year olds you need to get out from living under that rock

Next the term "reasonable person" what the hell is that suppose to mean there isn't a single person with a single base mind set on what is reasonable and what isn't that is so open ended its sad

also in the 1800s "reasonable" people believed if a person accuse of being a witch burn them at the stake, just because "reasonable" people say something doesn't make it right or true

and im saying this as someone who rarely does the most i do is accidental pair like hitting my toe on something then blunting it out lol

[Saefinn]

just going to say this last thing but swaring honestly .. shouldn't even be there hell must 10 year olds sware more than anyone else lol if you really think that its not reasonable to do that around 13 year olds you need to get out from living under that rock

Next the term "reasonable person" what the hell is that suppose to mean there isn't a single person with a single base mind set on what is reasonable and what isn't that is so open ended its sad

also in the 1800s "reasonable" people believed if a person accuse of being a witch burn them at the stake, just because "reasonable" people say something doesn't make it right or true

and im saying this as someone who rarely does the most i do is accidental pair like hitting my toe on something then blunting it out lol

It's because this is how ratings work and we have standards/rules/rating regarding what is and what isn't considered appropriate for certain age brackets and gives some measure for parents to make the choice on whether it is appropriate for their kid. A company wanting to market their game to a certain age group has a responsibility here and they're just fulfilling it.

Me? I grew up on horror movies, metal, South Park and violent video games and heck at the age of 10 I was teaching younger kids to swear. And as an adult I swear like a sailor, still play violent video games, am a pacifist, find I am immune to horror movies & find them dull and predictable and have an offensive sense of humour. So it hasn't negatively impacted me, so I can get that argument and to me, that's a question of how you choose to parent and that's how my parents chose to parent. But the reality is, that's not Square Enix's choice to make, it's the parent's choice to make, so they can't make a teen game and decide what's appropriate for teens, instead a standard exists on what is appropriate, and the parents can use that in their decision making. Square Enix, however, can choose their target audience...and they have, which means they have to obligate to any standards they're subject to...which they are.

[NepKo]

Yes, everyone is expected to adjust reasonably to what is accepted by the games rating (which is teen, btw), or risk trouble, especially when amongst strangers in a public setting.

You DO know what the ToS is? “Irl rules that apply to a fantasy game”..right?

You can’t shout profanity at a baseball stadium, or be crazy drunk at a restaurant without risk of getting thrown out, this is no different.

By your very abrasive reaction here, I can begin to guess why you might have gone to jail. When you rub people the wrong way don’t get mad when they report you over petty things. You agreed to the rules, you broke them, you deal with the consequences of that.

Only abrasive towards you. And teen btw is defined as 13 and up. If you let your child play at such a young age it's to be expected that they're gonna be exposed to certain things. And the TOS you're mentioning isn't worth much since it doesn't give actual definitions for Harassment or anything else, leaving it to be arbitrarily defined however anyone wants to define it.

You don't go to jail for yelling profanity at a baseball stadium. Not a good example. I guess the take home from what you're saying is that when people "rub" me the wrong way I'll just make sure to report them too.

[Neri]

You don't go to jail for yelling profanity at a baseball stadium. Not a good example. I guess the take home from what you're saying is that when people "rub" me the wrong way I'll just make sure to report them too.

You are free to do so, but the person who will decide is the GM. Also you won't know the result whether the person in question is going to go to jail or not anyway.

[MrPresident]

You don't go to jail for yelling profanity at a baseball stadium. Not a good example.

They never said you’d go to jail, they said you’d be kicked out. Which you have been. You’ve not actually been imprisoned. You’ve been put on a timeout in a video game because you can’t follow the rules and despite many people here explaining the rules you’ve broken, your only answer so far is “well I don’t like the rules!”

There’s nothing more anyone else can add to this. The TOS is what it is. Either stop misbehaving or continue like you are and rack up suspensions until you’re eventually banned completely. Your choice.

[MilkieTea]

They never said you’d go to jail, they said you’d be kicked out. Which you have been. You’ve not actually been imprisoned. You’ve been put on a timeout in a video game because you can’t follow the rules and despite many people here explaining the rules you’ve broken, your only answer so far is “well I don’t like the rules!”

There’s nothing more anyone else can add to this. The TOS is what it is. Either stop misbehaving or continue like you are and rack up suspensions until you’re eventually banned completely. Your choice.

This. TOS exists for a reason, break TOS and face the consequences if someone reports you. You know the rule you broke, you know why youre there, just wait for your punishment.

[Vidu]

just going to say this last thing but swaring honestly .. shouldn't even be there hell must 10 year olds sware more than anyone else lol if you really think that its not reasonable to do that around 13 year olds you need to get out from living under that rock

Next the term "reasonable person" what the hell is that suppose to mean there isn't a single person with a single base mind set on what is reasonable and what isn't that is so open ended its sad

also in the 1800s "reasonable" people believed if a person accuse of being a witch burn them at the stake, just because "reasonable" people say something doesn't make it right or true

and im saying this as someone who rarely does the most i do is accidental pair like hitting my toe on something then blunting it out lol

In regards to your questions what a "reasonable person" is: My best guess would be that the ToS "borrows" this term from the legal term popular in the USA - you might have heard of their "reasonable person standard" before, which is - from my limited understanding as someone who isnt a lawyer in any US-state - basically a mean to determine wether an ordinary, average person would consider something wrong or how an ordinary person would behave in any given situation.

While there is certainly some "wiggle room" - though I'm not sure if the US law would agree on that - in what the average person would consider resonable, there are certainly some things that are pretty much universaly agreed upon, I'd say? Taking your example from your first paragraph: Swearing.
Swearing is usually understood as something rather inappropriate or bad, involving the use of offensive language for the purpose of using that offensive language. Some words are pretty much only used as swearing words. On top of that, refering back to your first paragraph: If you know you're swearing, you know that you're using offensive language right now (or at least language with the intend of it being offensive). So... if you're aware that you're swearing you should also be aware that the average person (or reasonable person) will consider that offensive, thus you're violating the ToS.
Anything thats labeled a swearword is probably something a "reasonable person" would consider offensive language, since thats right there in the definition of swearword.

So yeah, "reasonable person" might not be the most clearly definied term for anyone who hasnt studied law in the US, but its not as wishy-washy as you make it out to be. (I think its also pretty clear that the ToS arent refering to reasonable people from the 1800s - and even then I wouldnt be so confident to assume that the rest of the population would thought about Salem as being a city full of reasonable people. I might be wrong on that, though. I'm not a historian either.)

And lastly: It doesnt really matter oif it doesnt "harm" 13 year olds if people swear around them. Because it doesnt matter how much sense the rules SE make to you. Those rules are not up for debate. You agreed to them and now you follow them or get out. Its basically their house they invited you into - under the condition that you dont swear (not a very difficult rule to follow, I'd say).

It really amazes me how many people (probably above the age of 13) are not able to stop themselves from swearing basically in public. Sometimes I wonder how these people hold jobs... go on dates... order food in a restaurant... you know, basically any interaction with other people in their lifes who are not close friends or family with the same love for just swearing all day.

[Vidu]

You don't go to jail for yelling profanity at a baseball stadium. Not a good example. I guess the take home from what you're saying is that when people "rub" me the wrong way I'll just make sure to report them too.

You might not go to jail, but you might get kicked out of the stadium - which is basically what moardian goal and an ingame ban are: You being kicked out of the stadium aka game. So yeah, good example.

[Goji1639]

Definitely have to tiptoe like crazy if you want to have anything resembling a conversation that adults might have. Any jokes or banter that could be construed as PG13 or higher should only be heard by friends you trust.

I learned early on how strict this game is when my forum account got suspended after I made a facetious comment about using shirk to kill healers in DF. The suspension came with a warning that forum infractions could cause me to lose access to my SE account permanently. That's more money and time invested than I'm willing to throw away, so most of my conversing in-game involves family friendly macros, and I make sure I play nice on the forums even when arguing with people.