On the 2nd January 2012 Tyche Shepherd informed us that the state of estate land was:
- Adult: 2,877 sims
- General: 3,141 sims
- Moderate: 17,822 sims
Moderate remained king, but Adult sims had increased by 872 during 2011, General had also increased but at a slower rate, 434.
Fast forward roughly twelve months to 6th January 2013 and Tyche informed us that the state of estate land was:
- Adult: 3,458
- General: 2,302
- Moderate: 15,143
Now bearing in mind that we’ve lost around 12% of private estates, adult Sims have stood up well. Some adult sims may be converted moderate sims, so this isn’t an exact science but we can now see that adult sims are firmly in second place when it comes to choice of classification for estate owners, moderate remains King by a long chalk.
The thing is, why are adult sims popular? I visited three roleplaying sims yesterday, they were all adult, only one obviously so, in a rather uncomfortable way to be honest which wasn’t blatantly obvious from reading the blurb, but once I landed and read a few notecards I could see it wouldn’t be my thing and I could see why it was adult. I’ll be fair to the sim owners here, they designed the sim in such a way that I could find this information without venturing too deep into the sim, so they are not looking to trick people into visiting them or anything like that and I think that’s the responsible thing to do.
The other two weren’t obviously adult, there were homes and city roleplay in one and a bit of fantasy roleplay and a town in another but nothing stood out as requiring adult classification. One of the reasons for these sims being adult may be the reason why moderate (or mature as it once was) sims became so prevalent, the upper rating gives a sim owner more choice and errs on the side of caution. Sim owners don’t really want to worry what people are doing behind closed doors on their sim and whereas the TOS sort of allows some adult activities behind closed doors on moderate, going for adult classification pretty much removes any grey areas.
Some people like the fact that avatars who arrive on adult sims have ticked a box to say they’re adult, removing some liability and worries for a sim owner, but far from removing all concerns and liabilities.
The thing to bear in mind here is that adult does not automatically mean pornographic, it can often just be that there may be some gore (gore, not Gor!), there may be some bad language, but adult doesn’t mean pornographic by default. The moral of the story being that people shouldn’t be put off visiting an adult sim just because it’s rated adult, but they should probably pay close attention to the hints given in sim descriptions and handle with care when going adult.
A simpler explanation may be to reduce traffic and headaches to keep out newbies/bots who haven’t gone through the oh-so-stringent Adult Verification process.
-ls/cm
That certainly has been cited as a reason for going adult, I definitely think that’s a factor.
The adult verification process is now simply providing, at sign up, a date of birth that makes you 18 or over, which seems to me as good as you’re going to get (and, as Viale Linden once said, before he left, if it’s good enough for Blogger …).
I’ve always thought, as a sim owner, the advantage to having an Adult classification is that you can stop worrying. It’s like having a Mature sim used to be, before Adult came along. Strictly speaking, there’s all sorts of stuff the owner of M-rated land and her tenants have to check before the tenants can safely use sex beds in the privacy of their skyboxes, and I would rather just not have to bother with that sort of nonsense.
My sims have the same rules they’ve always had — don’t upset the tenants and other visitors, and in particular don’t upset me. That’s all we need.
Pretty much agree with you, I think adult sims continue to rise because people who pay more attention realise they’re the same as the old mature sims, less worry because you make that flag. This is why mature has always been the popular choice, adult seems too icky for some but others just decide, it’s the safest choice.