This is thirteenth of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Lindsay Ishihiro

LEMON ALERT: this fic features hot! smexy! boys! kissing! don’t like, don’t read! you’ve been warned!

My eyes were tender and pure on the fateful day I first beheld a content warning on the internet. It was for a Sailor Moon fanfic, or possibly Pokemon; the actual story probably lives somewhere on the internet still, a text file in an archive that hasn’t seen the touch of its webmaster’s hand since before Y2K. Its warning stands like two trunk-like legs in the shifting sand: don’t like, don’t read.

It was a simpler time.

In games, the subject of content warnings has a tendency to spark debate. It brings to mind tedious arguments that video games cause harm (they don’t) or that they cause others to do harm (correlation is not causation), that they’re brainrot unworthy of being called art (insulting) and adult games are especially so. The thing is, I care about content warnings. From the first fanfic I read where Tuxedo Mask accidentally impregnated Zoisite with his magic rose — not a euphemism — my home has been in fandom communities where strange content is the norm and content warning is the law of the land, both as courtesy to some and an enticement to others.

Adult games have a lot in common with the playful spaces of fandom communities. They can both be places of great vulnerability, not just for the creator but for those consuming it. Both encourage the player or reader to be fully embodied in the text, to see themselves within it. This agency, and the raw desires and discomforts that arise from it, are encased in a frequently upsetting stew of sexual baggage, assumptions, intimate memories and, sometimes, trauma. Adult content can turn you inside out, and just like in real sex, that can be welcome or disgusting… or both.

How Fandom Uses Content Warnings

The things fans make for the things they love can be wonderful. They can also be horny, off-putting, anatomically improbable, and of dubious morality. They can be vehicles to understand and process one’s relationship to the text, as well as one’s experiences with trauma, transmuting complicated feelings into pure, high-octane filth. Many stories, however, are written purely out of joy — from a desire to titillate, not from a place of shame or trauma. The fans want to do inscrutable things to Cloud Strife’s cervix, not because they are ashamed, but because they must. Stories where everyone goes to therapy and lives happily ever after are shelved right next to the ones where shady figures do violent things to eye sockets — for love.

The fandom crucible that made me was once a decentralized place. Content warnings were far from standardized, and generally focused on warning the reader away from potentially being squicked — that’s fandom for ‘repulsed by’ — by the idea that boys might kiss sometimes. That changed in 2007, when the Organization for Transformative Works — a non-profit created to preserve and legitimize fanwork — responded to increasing censorship by creating, literally, an Archive of Our Own. By necessity, communal laws were needed to tame and standardize that lawless land — without censoring the turgid, throbbing passion of the fans.

AO3’s robust content warning system allows everyone to get what they want from that deep, churning sea of the id, while filtering out what they don’t:

• Rating (General, Teen, Mature, Explicit)
• Genders of main pairing (M/M, M/F, F/F, Multi, Other, None)
• Archive-specific content warnings, if applicable (major character death, underage content, non-consensual sex, graphic violence)
• Completion status of the work

In addition to its four mandatory warnings, creators are encouraged to tag freely and robustly with additional tags. Effectively, this has allowed fans themselves to develop a content warning system that is efficient, flexible, contextually appropriate, and still has room for a lot of fun and personality. This comes through in a unique fandom patois, such as the fandom-specific warning “[Character]’s A+ Parenting” to reference the presence of canonical parental abuse or neglect, or the meta-tag ‘Dead Dove, Do Not Eat’ to indicate that other, more harrowing tags should be reread and taken seriously.

The system goes deeper than tags. Authors notes at the beginning and end of a story give additional context and link related works or conversations. Often, for particularly challenging content, there will be a mild description at the outset, with the option to jump to complete spoilers in the footnotes. Sometimes, the notes will provide tips on where to stop and begin reading again to avoid certain content, like a sex scene. Being able to allow the reader to opt-in to a series of escalating content warnings is what I channel when I write content warnings for my own games and comics. And all this was done voluntarily, belying the common concern in video games that “excessive” warnings are a stepping stone to censorship.

The State Of Content Warnings In Adult Games

Video games have been slower on the uptake. With the oversight of PEGI and the ESRB, content warnings are often seen as mandatory buzzkills, a scarlet letter that warns away prospective players or, worse, could see them on the news as the first casualty of the next moral panic. Overzealous advocates of content warnings run the risk of being seen as Puritan scolds, only wanting to label problematic content today so they can ban it tomorrow.

Forced to play on the defensive, creators of adult games can be reluctant to embrace content warnings with the same joy in their hearts as fandom does. In an effort to be seen as cool and sexy and completely unbothered by sexual scolds, it’s common to see content warnings turned into jokes. Being too brisk, flippant, vague, or judgemental is common.

Reflexively reaching for humour — or, worse, mockery of the player, as the aptly-named Rimworld mod RimJobWorld does when it adds loading screen text mocking “SJWs” and those who can’t tell fantasy from reality — is an understandable response in the context of constantly feeling on the defensive for creating adult content. Insecurity and a sense of a lack of safety is the opposite of sexy. It’s wasteful to throw away this critical first interaction with your player on a joke, instead of inviting them into the vulnerable space you have created for them.

Another common tactic is to simply avoid giving a detailed content warning at all, instead relying on boilerplate about the presence of unnamed fetishes and warnings to turn back if the player is under eighteen. This approach is cursory, but in being so it loses the power of titillation to draw in players. Now, let us consider the original disclaimer for Corruption of Champions:

I urge you to resist the impulse to withhold information from your players to preserve the ‘mystery’. Hot, sexy players are in your area, and they wanna play YOUR game — or, they would, if they knew what it was about.

How Adult Games Can Do Better

The conversation surrounding content warnings in games often revolves around reducing harm — protecting the player from content that could cause trauma or affect their mental state. But can playing a video game, even one with upsetting content, cause emotional harm?

I’m going to make a very complicated answer short: no. Playing a video game is a consensual act, and the power to continue is always in the hands of the player. A game can be a reminder of real harm that has occurred to the player in the past, and a game can often change us, or force us to confront feelings that may have been easier to ignore. This is the purpose of art, of which games are unquestionably a part. We must reframe the conversation around content warnings in games, rejecting the narrative that their sole purpose is to reduce harm. The better purpose of a content warning is to help a player make informed decisions about their own participation. They are the expert in what content they find appropriate, and what they need to have a good time with a game. Not having a good time with a game’s content is largely a mismatch in expectation versus reality. A good content warning gives the player all the information they need in order to choose whether or not to seek out your game.

Titillation is a powerful drive. Seeking pleasure is natural. Sometimes pleasure-seeking can drive someone to seek out content that is challenging, even upsetting. A content warning system doesn’t just warn, but invites as well. It says: you will find what you need here. It says: I have prepared a place for you.

The best content warnings are not one-and-done — they are systems of support that flex and meet the needs of the player while keeping within scope for your game. Like the multi-leveled warning system of Archive of Our Own. they go beyond simply warning the player. They use multiple strategies to create a feeling of safety, even when the player is exposed to content that is challenging, gross, or upsetting.

Such strategies include:

• Content warning messages
• Showing a basic list of warnings, and allowing the player to click on the ones that concern them and receive full spoilers
• Content filtering
• In-game warnings before difficult content is about to occur
• Scene skips and ‘ejection seats’ to end scenes early with no penalty
• Allowing space to debrief and self-regulate after difficult content
• Offering additional support, i.e. directions to resources for domestic abuse or self-harm

A game I want to highlight is Degrees of Lewdity — a text-based game with a genuinely breathtaking array of niche kinks. Its content warning text is sparse, but their content filtering is top of its class. Inside the game are multiple menus allowing the player to customize almost every element of the game, from NPC gender and genitalia to the presence of certain kinks to whether or not NPCs will ruffle your hair.

Though it’s not technically an adult game, the field is bare for games that use fandom-style opt-in warnings with full spoilers. I Was a Teenage Exocolonist uses fully opt-in spoilers as its warning system, both in-game and on its website. This allows players to get more information on content that concerns them, while preserving the mystery for things that don’t.

Not every method works for every game; there are often constraints due to voice acting, budget, localization, art assets, etc. If you must restrain yourself to only a content warning message, the key is in the tone. Refrain from being flippant, but don’t be a scold either. Focus on elements that may surprise the player of an adult game, such as violence or self-harm. Be precise and informative — you have nothing to be ashamed of for making a game, but most importantly, neither do your players for enjoying it.

Don’t Like, Don’t Play

Managing, setting, and meeting your player’s expectations through a robust content warning system creates a safer, more enjoyable experience, especially when your game deals with more ‘challenging’ content and extreme topics. Some players will ignore or underestimate any warnings you give. Others will be surprised by discomfort they didn’t know they had. But some players — like me! — are coming to your game because they compulsively seek out content they know will provoke strong emotional reactions. These players may seek out ‘extreme’ content as a way of processing things that have happened in their lives, or things they live in fear of happening. Many simply enjoy the emotional and physical thrill of experiencing content that surprises and challenges them while it turns them on.

A good content warning system welcomes those players while allowing the others to choose for themselves not to play, to filter or change the content to suit them, or to wait until they are in the correct headspace to enjoy the experience. It increases player trust and safety, and in a close-knit industry like adult games, that ultimately helps you more than it hurts.

Adult games can and should look to fandom for inspiration, embracing content warnings as both an act of community care and as a way of attracting players who are looking for their particular brand of strange and unusual, whatever their reasons.

Addendum

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following post-script was written by Lindsay on September 4th, 2025, and does not appear in the original publication of AAA3.

Shortly after AAA3 was published, the moral panic roulette again landed on video games in the form of widespread censorship of adult games on itch.io due to the puritan stranglehold that payment processors have on storefronts. While the effects of this reverberate through the adult games industry — and among queer games, and among any creators that face censorship — it may seem naive to champion explicit content warnings, as this essay does.

It’s understandable if developers hesitate to label their work due to fears of censorship. However, the danger to adult games does not lie in the warnings — it is in the system itself, where payment processors control what can and cannot be sold according to the whims of pearl-clutching scolds. They find adult material objectionable solely because it has the audacity to exist. Removing content warnings is like repainting the barn: it may not be red any more, but it’s still full of sexy, sexy pigs.

In fandom, no payment processor gets between creator and viewer. Until the same can be said of adult games, adult games will always be at risk of censorship, regardless of the explicitness of the tags. I encourage those worried about censorship to continue giving heat to payment processors like PayPal, Visa/MasterCard, and Stripe, and let them know that the war against censorship is still on. It only took a thousand collective voices shouting at them to start this latest melee, and we have far more than that on our side.

Lindsay Ishihiro is a BAFTA-losing writer of video games (I Was A Teenage Exocolonist) and creator of webcomics (Motherlover, How Baby) who revels in crafting emotionally-devastating reasons for fictional people to explore each other’s bodies. Cries in the presence of tigers. Bakes cookies when under pressure. No gender, all beef.

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