Hello, this is a kind of follow-up to my other thread here about Not For Everyone projects, but that topic was a little cluttered and didn't illustrate the point very clearly, so
Scratch Team, could you please leave both topics open, thanks.



My suggestion is that projects with very minor, unrealistic or cartoon violence shouldn't be restricted from search results or being front paged.

On Scratch, currently, projects that contain very minor violence like:

• Tom and Jerry cartoon violence
  

• An unrealistic game where a character fights unrealistic, non-scary monsters with a sword with no blood (Like Minecraft) This is an example of minor, unrealistic violence
  

are restricted from:

• Being front paged
  

• Showing up in the search results
  

• Being featured or curated (featured projects do not allow any violence, no matter how minor)
  

Why do I want this to be implemented?
I fully understand that Scratch is supposed to be appropriate for all ages and that if Scratch allows projects that are too violent to be displayed, parents or educators might not let their child on Scratch because they think it is too violent for their child.
But projects like Tom and Jerry or unrealistic non-bloody sword fighting is extremely minor violence. Here in the UK, there are games released with the “age 3+” rating that contain very minor violence that is unrealistic. This type of violence is not violent enough to be deemed unsuitable.

Here is the statistics page. The VAST majority of users who register are 9-18 years old. There are no users who have registered when they were 3, and if a child is young enough that Tom and Jerry violence is unsuitable for them they are probably too young to be on the internet unsupervised anyway.

The type of violence I am talking about is about the level of Minecraft, and there are many young kids who play Minecraft, it is a very family friendly game.

To sum it up:
Although Scratch is fully family friendly already, it shouldn't have to be so extremely kid friendly that it caters to babies and toddlers. Minor non-graphic sword fighting against non-human monsters, or Tom and Jerry cartoon violence, is still only very minor violence and the presence of these projects will not make the site non-family friendly. Most of you will agree that Minecraft is not “unsuitable for the community”.

Please support for the reasons I have given.

I supported the previous post, I support it again! I feel as though Scratch may be taking things a little too far with their “NFE” projects. I agree, that if someone can't handle cartoon violence (you may want to reword “Tom and Jerry Violence” to “Cartoon Violence”, by the way), then they are probably, like, 2.

Also, please do not ask for support. Remember that the Suggestions are not supposed to gather a lot of support, and instead is meant to bring up a nice discussion about adding a new thing.

WolfCat67 wrote:

I supported the previous post, I support it again! I feel as though Scratch may be taking things a little too far with their “NFE” projects. I agree, that if someone can't handle cartoon violence (you may want to reword “Tom and Jerry Violence” to “Cartoon Violence”, by the way), then they are probably, like, 2.

Also, please do not ask for support. Remember that the Suggestions are not supposed to gather a lot of support, and instead is meant to bring up a nice discussion about adding a new thing.

Yes, only extremely young children (younger than 3 maybe) can't handle cartoon violence.

Support for the reasons listed in the other post.

Thanks!

Cub56 wrote:

Thanks!

No problem

On your other topic there was some stuff about warnings for projects. Maybe there could be warnings. Also maybe if this is possible maybe for users who used a parent's email maybe the parent could decide what kind of projects the user can view. If the user has an email and they used their email then maybe they could decide for it.

Support, no need to hide all violence.

I agree with your logic, so you can change the title to 4 supporters. However, I think that you should change the title to "Allow Cartoon Violence in Projects" so people looking at it on the suggestions list won't think that it's PG-13 violence or something.

Support.

unsightedmetal6 wrote:

Support.

Could you please provide information as to why you support?

Cub56 wrote:

Hello, this is a kind of follow-up to my other thread here about Not For Everyone projects, but that topic was a little cluttered and didn't illustrate the point very clearly, so
Scratch Team, could you please leave both topics open, thanks.



My suggestion is that projects with very minor, and I mean minor, violence shouldn't be restricted from search results or being front paged.

On Scratch, currently, projects that contain very minor violence like:

• Tom and Jerry cartoon violence
  

• An unrealistic game where a character fights unrealistic, non-scary monsters with a sword with no blood (Like Minecraft)
  

are restricted from:

• Being front paged
  

• Showing up in the search results
  

• Being featured or curated (featured projects do not allow any violence, no matter how minor)
  

Why do I want this to be implemented?
I fully understand that Scratch is supposed to be appropriate for all ages and that if Scratch allows projects that are too violent to be displayed, parents or educators might not let their child on Scratch because they think it is too violent for their child.
But projects like Tom and Jerry or unrealistic non-bloody sword fighting is extremely minor violence. Here in the UK, there are games released with the “age 3+” rating that contain very minor violence that is unrealistic. This type of violence is not violent enough to be deemed unsuitable.

Here is the statistics page. The VAST majority of users who register are 9-18 years old. There are no users who have registered when they were 3, and if a child is young enough that Tom and Jerry violence is unsuitable for them they are probably too young to be on the internet unsupervised anyway.

The type of violence I am talking about is about the level of Minecraft, and there are many young kids who play Minecraft, it is a very family friendly game.

To sum it up:
Although Scratch is fully family friendly already, it shouldn't have to be so extremely kid friendly that it caters to babies and toddlers. Minor non-graphic sword fighting against non-human monsters, or Tom and Jerry cartoon violence, is still only very minor violence and the presence of these projects will not make the site non-family friendly. Most of you will agree that Minecraft is not “unsuitable for the community”.

Please support for the reasons I have given.

Support. I once read a GameInformer article about the best “legit” video games to get for a very small child (Ones that were very anti-violent), and a few issues later, they got a letter about the article, like "But I've never thought games like Mario and Kirby were that violent." So I support.

Cub56 wrote:

Here is the statistics page. The VAST majority of users who register are 9-18 years old. There are no users who have registered when they were 3, and if a child is young enough that Tom and Jerry violence is unsuitable for them they are probably too young to be on the internet unsupervised anyway.

The type of violence I am talking about is about the level of Minecraft, and there are many young kids who play Minecraft, it is a very family friendly game.

Ok, You might need to read what you're saying. Age level isn't the key. It's the level of UNDERSTANDING that people have and if they do or do not KNOW what to do when watching content that's unstable or violent. You're saying that if someone's 3 they can't play on Scratch, but the second when they turn 4 they CAN!? Besides, Minecraft is EXTREMELY violent. You can MURDER innocent mobs and people, you can destroy VAST quantities of objects that people spent LOTS OF TIME making, and it's just really inappropriate. The fact that if it has blood or not DOES NOT MATTER when summing up the violence in the game. The ONLY reason young kids play Minecraft is because they've inherited a bad influence from an older sibling that's addicted to the violent contents of the game, and the older sibling TEACHES the YOUNG one that it's OK to do that! It is NOT ok, and this is crazy. Did you know that people have been KILLED because Minecraft abducted people's minds!? It's basically Grand Theft Auto without Guns or Cars. Besides, are you talking about the OLD Tom and Jerry or the newer ones? Because the OLD ones hardly have ANY violence (Just the occasional mousetrap or thumbtack antic by Jerry) and no blood at all.

I think the above person is just opposed to Minecraft, destroying blocks of stone isn't violence and any violence is just really unrealistic.

Some 5 year olds play Minecraft.

No support, there are kids here! But in all seriousness, any violence, be it realistic or non-realistic can be harmful to a young kid's mind in my opinion. Sure, there may not be any studies about “lightly violent video games” on kids with ages 2-5 but this is the age where kids really get their personality and if their personality-making period is interrupted by killing skeletons, zombies and huge spiders with diamond swords… well.

jji10 wrote:

No support, there are kids here! But in all seriousness, any violence, be it realistic or non-realistic can be harmful to a young kid's mind in my opinion. Sure, there may not be any studies about “lightly violent video games” on kids with ages 2-5 but this is the age where kids really get their personality and if their personality-making period is interrupted by killing skeletons, zombies and huge spiders with diamond swords… well.

The number of 2-5 year olds on Scratch (there are no under 4's so I mean 4-5 year olds) is negligible and Tom and Jerry cartoon violence really isn't that bad nor is Minecraft. Some people on here seem to be talking about Minecraft as if it's GTA or something.

Also there are games rated 3+ with minor violence like this.

On the App Store, believe it or not, Minecraft was initially given a 3+ rating, only to be upped to 7+ later when people gave complaints.

Support; if people don't want their kid exposed to violence, then the kid shouldn't:

• Be on the internet. Violence is all over the place there, in ads, videos, and other places.
  
• Watch TV. Most TV shows that aren't for 2 year olds have some kind of violence.
  
• Be around other people. People fight ALL THE TIME. It's normal. Sure, it doesn't always devolve to a slugfest, but an argument is STILL VIOLENCE.
  

Also, the NFE rating is kinda moot, as I said on the last topic, mostly because you can get to an NFE project from an FE project by simply hopping through a few links. Seriously. Try this yourself from a music project to a game. Don't use the top bar at all, and don't use your own profile. It's very easy.

FULL SUPPORT, kids that are 8 plus should be able to handle a enemy disappearing after being hit. Games without a little violence restricts heavily on the games that can be featured. This results in the featured section featuring mainly on games that have little or no action.

braxbroscratcher wrote:

On the App Store, believe it or not, Minecraft was initially given a 3+ rating, only to be upped to 7+ later when people gave complaints.

Support; if people don't want their kid exposed to violence, then the kid shouldn't:

• Be on the internet. Violence is all over the place there, in ads, videos, and other places.
  
• Watch TV. Most TV shows that aren't for 2 year olds have some kind of violence.
  
• Be around other people. People fight ALL THE TIME. It's normal. Sure, it doesn't always devolve to a slugfest, but an argument is STILL VIOLENCE.
  

Also, the NFE rating is kinda moot, as I said on the last topic, mostly because you can get to an NFE project from an FE project by simply hopping through a few links. Seriously. Try this yourself from a music project to a game. Don't use the top bar at all, and don't use your own profile. It's very easy.

The people who complained probably thought hitting pixelated green rectangles would make kids violent.

I'm asking for the restriction to be removed so that good projects with a little unrealistic or cartoony violence shouldn't be restricted from being front paged.

awesome5185 wrote:

FULL SUPPORT, kids that are 8 plus should be able to handle a enemy disappearing after being hit. Games without a little violence restricts heavily on the games that can be featured. This results in the featured section featuring mainly on games that have little or no action.

Exactly! I think it would be great to have more of a variety of featured projects, not just platformers with a cube jumping over a wall, non-realistic violence is fine to not have such restrictions.