Post by Apocalypse Theory in Lets talk about a content/age rating system for itch.io

Viewing post in Lets talk about a content/age rating system for itch.io

I have to say something should be done about this

I was browsing the front page of the html5 games and came across this game called can-i which after about 2 minutes of game play basically devolves to torturing a cat with a Knife.

I know I would NEVER want my children to come across this type of game when they are looking for HTML5 games to play on the internet.

I think games with content like that should be hidden away behind some sort of paywall where you have to verify your age in some way to access.

I can't think of many people who want their kids coming across games they can play in any web browser about torturing cats with knives. (Now that I can state how that game ends, once I accidently cut the cats ear off moving my mouse around to try to find out what to do I stopped playing)

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leafoAdmin5 years ago(+4)

Something that like should be flagged as adult using our existing options. I've found the page and updated the setting on it.

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fullmontis5 years ago(+2)

I'm sorry, I didn't realize the game wasn't flagged NSFW. However, I'd like to mention that the game has a content warning right at the beginning that requires an action to start.

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DaedalusMachina5 years ago(+2)

Sorry doesn't cut it. You deserved that catty pun :P

But really though; to torture a cat with a knife and you didn't flag the content as adult or NSFW? Shame on you!

This is why I feel we should have a community tagging system to make up for what game devs fail to do themselves.

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fullmontis5 years ago (1 edit) (+3)

Mea culpa. In my defense, though, I never released a NSFW game before, and last time I checked, which is to be fair quite a while ago, there was no way to flag a game as NSFW besides the tagging system (remember that itch is a very young site and it is constantly changing). Also, the flag is not on the main page of the game page creation, it is hidden in the metadata menu and you have to know it is there and look for it (which I didn't know until it was mentioned to me). Which is why I put the CW in the beginning in the first place, since I don't want to expose people to content they don't want to see.

You say CW is not enough, but to me it's actually the best way to approach this, since if someone happens on my game by chance, surpassing the internal filtering system of the site (like from an external link), they will still know if they want to play it or not. I mean, you can't get much better than having the dev itself say "look, this game has this and this, if you don't like this then don't play it." But I can see why it isn't a good choice to enforce CW at the beginning of every game.

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DaedalusMachina5 years ago (1 edit) (+2)

Your humble response has moved me to forgive your transgressions. I'm hoping itchio makes a more easily-accessible NSFW/adult tag available for game devs to self-flag their games to avoid situations like this in the future. I know there's a (stickied) discussion thread on this and I'd encourage you to participate in that discussion if you haven't already done so.

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