Depicting Violence and Sex in a Text Adventure

When 40 Shades of Grey came out, two things happened. The sex toy industry had a major spike and there was a major outcry for age ratings in books.

Books, despite being the oldest and longest standing medium, have never had an official age rating system in place. Meaning that despite the pornographic material in books like 50 Shades anyone of any age can buy them.

This left me in a bit of a conundrum; how should text adventures be rated?

If I were to class Inhumanity as a novel then I wouldn't need to worry about it, but with it being an interactive novel, it can be argued that because it is written in the 2nd person and involves decision making from the reader that it is a simulator.

So I think of how a simulation game based on my novel would be rated and it would be a strict 18. There are numerous depictions of violence, both towards other people and to yourself, there are a couple of sexual encounters you can have and there are strong elements of horror in places.

But then the text part of text adventure comes into play. In a simulation game, the player would physically see these things and feel as if they were participating in them, justifying the 18 rating. But in Inhumanity, you are just reading, you see nothing except words on a page. Your imagination fills in the gaps and so we cannot put apply ratings.

After debating with myself on it I decided to go for a 12 rating and will put a warning on the google play page. Hopefully that absolves me of any criticism (doubtful) and can allow players (or parents of players) to make a more informed decision in regards to whether to purchase it or not.

What do you think?