I'm looking into building a racing game of sorts and I'm trying to envision what the classification ratings would look like for violence for this game.

The player (and all NPCs) would appear as science fiction racing vehicles, definitely not as organic beings or even as cars or anything like that. If the player crashes (which should happen frequently and at very high speeds) I'll probably replay the crash from an external camera angle. I wouldn't show detailed damage like the front of the craft crumpling up or anything involving a pilot, but I might include explosions or have the player fade / blink out with some implied damage there.

The player may also intentionally nudge NPC vehicles into obstacles and cause them to crash with the same effects as above.

The violence descriptions don't really cover this particular setting too well. What level of violence would this probably wind up as? 0? 1? For that matter, would this be above a cruelty 0 since the player is trying to take other (non-human) racers out of commission?

Again, this is a hypothetical game that's very early in development / conceptualization, but I'd like to picture what I'll be aiming for when submitting.

As the vehicles dont resemble humans or any kind of organic being, you should be able to get away with 0's

If you read the descriptions on the violence sub-classifications, it seems to me that this would be a 1 on blood and/or a 1 on things getting hurt. Certainly your game would be more violent than a tetris clone so it makes some sense to me that its violence classification would be a 1.

My sense is a 1, too. Nudging NPC cars into a barricade is similar to firing weapons at them, but maybe with some point off because you don't see the people driving, only the cars. (To me, it's the same, but to my 6 year old, they seem to be totally different things...)

MattEland:

I'm looking into building a racing game of sorts and I'm trying to envision what the classification ratings would look like for violence for this game.

The player (and all NPCs) would appear as science fiction racing vehicles, definitely not as organic beings or even as cars or anything like that. If the player crashes (which should happen frequently and at very high speeds) I'll probably replay the crash from an external camera angle. I wouldn't show detailed damage like the front of the craft crumpling up or anything involving a pilot, but I might include explosions or have the player fade / blink out with some implied damage there.

The player may also intentionally nudge NPC vehicles into obstacles and cause them to crash with the same effects as above.

The violence descriptions don't really cover this particular setting too well. What level of violence would this probably wind up as? 0? 1? For that matter, would this be above a cruelty 0 since the player is trying to take other (non-human) racers out of commission?

Again, this is a hypothetical game that's very early in development / conceptualization, but I'd like to picture what I'll be aiming for when submitting.

I'll be frank... Why are you concerned about a 1 point difference ? Most of what you described doesn't actually sound as interesting as if you were to do things that would probably get you a 1. Keep in mind, if it's for children, it's usually dumbed and numbed down a lot. So you should be factoring how much fun you want to sacrifice for the sake of a point. Also given the fact the main demographic for Xbox 360 is males in their 20's and such, you'll sell more 'with' violence than without it. Now if this were the Wii... Well than it'd be a different story, but the 360 is a very mature console. Crumpling of the front of the car would be better than an explosion by the way, but only if you do it well. There's nothing more unappealing than nerfed explosions and impacts, which turned me off of at least one XNA game I played. So I'm not totally off-topic here and going off on a tangent, I'd say you'll likely get a 1, I'd certainly give you a 1, cars smashing into each other is still quite violent, especially if it's a primary gameplay element.