Upcoming Changes to Content Ratings and Featured Home Page Content
We’ve heard feedback from many of you about the need for better ways to control what type of content you see on the home page. We’d like to share several changes we’ll be making to improve how you can share and discover content in AI Dungeon.
Why we’re making these changes
Although AI Dungeon was inspired by Dungeons and Dragons and has a strong representation of RPG players, you can create stories and adventures across any genre. You all have embraced this flexibility and created content on AI Dungeon that spans various genres, fictional universes, writing styles, and more. As our community has grown, many of you have shared an interest in having the content shown to you on AI Dungeon better reflect your own preferences.
In an ideal world, we’d follow the path of social platforms that build advanced personalization algorithms, invest in robust moderation teams, and create custom first-party content for their users. Perhaps one day, we will be able to have similar solutions. Today, we’re still a small team, and we have to look for creative solutions within the constraints we have as a company.
We’ve received lots of feedback that we could do better. User interviews with new players revealed that the content they saw on the home page made them question whether they would feel comfortable in the AI Dungeon community. Some of you have shared that our SFW category still has content that you find objectionable. Many of us at Latitude are parents, and we’d love to have our kids play AI Dungeon without worrying about the content they could be exposed to. Creators have been frustrated that their content won’t be featured on the home page if it’s labeled as NSFW.
At times, we’ve been tempted to make quick changes to address each of these problems. We’ve learned that interventions can have unintended consequences, so we wanted to take our time and be thoughtful with any adjustments.
We want to take a first step toward better supporting your content preferences. We hope that this is the first of many improvements, and we hope that one day, AI Dungeon can be fully personalized to you.
New Content Rating System
To address many of these issues and improve how players discover content we’ll be introducing a new content rating system into AI Dungeon. We’ve chosen to use a modified version of the ESRB rating system to add more granularity to the ratings of content published on AI Dungeon.
The new ratings will be Everyone, Teen, Mature, and Unrated. Some content will still be considered unpublishable, as defined by our Community Guidelines.
We chose to model after the ESRB ratings since it’s a rating system commonly used by other games, and the definitions are more widely understood than those for SFW/NSFW labels. This should enable creators to have an easier time labeling their content with the appropriate rating and help players more easily understand what each content rating means.
Changing Content Ratings
The content rating can be edited in the Details panel of your Adventure or Scenario. You’ll see a new section called Content Rating and a dropdown menu to select the appropriate rating. You can reference our Guidebook Article to help you decide which rating is appropriate for your content. Our community and moderation team is also happy to answer any questions you have about the new categories.
Unless you select a different rating, all published content will be defaulted to the Unrated category.
Transition Plan
While we’re transitioning to the new system, both the new system (based on ESRB ratings) and the old SFW/NSFW label will be displayed when editing or publishing a scenario or adventure. For now, the new content ratings won’t impact the visibility of the content on search, home page, or profiles. Other players will not be able to see the rating. We encourage you to start using this new content rating in preparation for other changes coming to AI Dungeon, which weʻll explain below.
All existing content will be marked as Unrated. We invite all of you to update your existing published content with a new content rating. Because there isnʻt a clear mapping from our old system to new, all content will need to be manually updated with our new rating system. Our team will also be reviewing and updating content to help with this effort.
After we’ve given you all time to update your content ratings, the NSFW label will be removed and we’ll use the new content ratings going forward. We’ll provide updates when we’re ready to cut over to the new system.
Home Page Improvements
Content Rating Preference
One of our most frequently requested features is a setting for you to decide what content you want to see on the home page. We’re finally bringing this feature to AI Dungeon.
A new control will be added to the home page (and mirrored on the Discover page and other players’ profiles) that allows you to select the content rating you’d like to see on those pages. You’ll be able to select from Everyone, Teen, Mature, and Unrated. This setting will be shared across all pages to make sure your preference is honored everywhere on AI Dungeon.
New Content Carousels and Curation
We’ll also be making changes to how content shows up on the home screen, updating it with new sections, or carousels, that showcase different types of content. Some of our existing carousels, like content from our Top Creators, will be preserved. Others will feature high-quality content that our team has manually curated.
We’ve designed these new home page sections to be flexible and easy to update. We plan to update curated sections regularly and experiment with different algorithmically driven sections. We’ve been listening to your ideas and suggestions on what content to feature. For instance, a player recently suggested a section highlighting scenarios that utilize scripting. We might do seasonal themes, contests, or even genre-specific sections. We’re open to ideas and suggestions for the type of content sections you’d like to see on AI Dungeon.
To make this possible, we’re investing in better systems and team resources dedicated to keeping home page content high-quality and fresh.
Creator Program
We’re incredibly appreciative and thankful to those of you creating and publishing content on AI Dungeon. Our creator community is one of the best parts of AI Dungeon, and we hope these home page changes will strengthen it even more!
As many of you know, we have a Creator Program that recognizes some of the best creators on the AI Dungeon platform. These creators receive special recognition in our Discord server, and their content is featured on the AI Dungeon home page.
We expect that the creator program requirements will need to be adjusted in light of the changes we’re making to content ratings and the home page.
Our plan is to carefully observe the impact of these changes and gather feedback from our creator community before committing to any specific adjustments to the program. We encourage creators to share their thoughts with us in Discord or via email.
We want to continue to recognize the creators of great content on AI Dungeon and give them meaningful incentives to create amazing scenarios for all of us to play. We’re excited to explore new ideas with them.
Publishing and Moderation Changes
We’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect the changes coming with the new content ratings. For now, these will be indicated as “Pending Changes” until the new ratings are fully utilized in AI Dungeon. We invite you to review the updated guidelines.
We’ve tried to simplify the guidelines to improve the experience for creators and all of you in the community. One thing we’ve learned about publishing rules is that there is always an exception to every rule. By simplifying, we’re putting more trust in our community and our moderation team.
Over the last two years, we’ve made significant changes to our moderation process. Multiple Latitude executives monitor our moderation efforts, and we’ve added team members to handle the day-to-day moderation work. We’ve also made sure that our community and moderation team are easy to get in touch with so that if creators ever have a question or concern, our team is there to answer any questions.
Our goal with moderation is not to judge or say what’s right or wrong. We are simply trying to make sure that players have the AI Dungeon experience they expect. If a player wants safe, family-friendly content, we want to give that to them. If a player is sensitive to triggering content, we want to help them avoid getting exposed to it unnecessarily.
Creators have been extremely supportive of this effort. By simplifying our Community Guidelines, we’re inviting creators to work closely with our moderators to label content so that the right audience can find it. With the changes to the home page, creators can be assured that no matter what their content rating is, players will be able to find and enjoy their creation.
Our hope is these changes will help you more easily find content youʻre interested in on AI Dungeon. Please feel free to share feedback or suggestions with us, especially during this transition period. Thanks for being part of our great community. Happy adventuring!