If you looked through a majority of games hosted on ITCH, you may notice one thing. Almost none of them have age ratings, even though that didn’t stop what happened on Steam, aside from size it gave ITCH far less cover for NSFW content.
My idea is to create a rating board that caters to Indie developers. If I get at minimum 10 publishers to sign on to this, decide on what the standards should be. Then we’ll do our best. This board won’t just be for games, in the title I said independent media, not just independent games. It should be capable of giving ratings to books, comics, albums, music, and even movies and TV. Regardless of which platform hosts it.
The goals of this ratings board are simple.
* Ensure publishers have full responsibility for what they publish
* Give parents a guide when purchasing for their children.
* Label what can be seen and heard in the media in fine detail.
* Never to be cost prohibitive for any publisher who seeks certification, by giving them the option to self apply a rating while a final rating is pending.
* Not to be a replacement for the ESRB, MPAA, TCRS or other ratings board.
* Not to be confined to one country. Since media is developed and published all over the world, a world wide standard rather than a national standard will help it stand out and lend more credibility.
* To never refuse to rate media because it depicts imagery or sound that are too extreme for sensitive audiences. To always label appropriately what will be seen or heard.
This idea is not mine exclusively, it’s for anyone who wants to fight back against absolute censorship.