itch.io

You need to forget about tag suggesting “adult NSFW content“ you need “Mandatory” yes/no checkboxes for all future submissions from publishers for each title they submit, if a fails to properly represent what is depicted in the main game and separate DLC then you move to deindex them with a proper warning. You need a 3rd payment processor. I’d recommend Coinbase at the moment as someone you should be talking to.

For anyone who wishes to adopt this idea as their own, is to keep in mind the costly nature of getting a rating from other ratings bodies. Also, ITCH needs to give publishers more comprehensive options when marking their products in the mean time, also allowing an outside payment processor of the publisher’s choosing to bypass PayPal and Stripe all together 

The one that’s registered with the ESRB for the version you’re selling. If the rating is good enough for Steam it’s good enough here. If you don’t have one just determine which age group it should be placed in yourself 

I can also add that ITCH can implement user submitted ratings and display ESRB ratings for PC games for games on PC.

I understand it’s a complicated matter, but I did say that this idea is not exclusively my own and can be adopted by anyone who wants to fight against censorship.

For the international aspect, keep in mind almost every international organization has a branch. An office in the country in which they operate, say the office in the U.S. says one game is 7+ while the other game is 17+. Each international branch will have access to the information that was used to reach each conclusion, if they agree, then good but if they don’t, that’s when there may be a minor conflict and needs to be quickly resolved. Does one country trust the standards of another? That’s a good question that we need to be asking now because these conflicts already exist in every entertainment industry right now. 

Recently, The Abyss, the film by James Cameron was refused or rating in Britain for it’s 4K Blu Ray release simply because of the mouse and the liquid oxygen because they said it’s animal cruelty.

Think about how often this has happened to video games.

i’m interested, if you can handle printable shipping labels for physical goods

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.

That’s true, it would be a good idea to have the money for such an undertaking in advance. If I wanted to go ahead and talk with other publishers here about this, we could get a plan together. Possibly host a Jam just for that purpose so ITCH doesn’t occur any cost. I’ll see who is willing to sign onto this because an ESRB certificate is very costly for an independent developer. $400 to $800 fee for a small title, very cost prohibitive to someone who is a working out of a garage, a basement, a bedroom, or a dorm room. If 

Over the past 10 years, Have you or anyone at ITCH ever thought of an age based rating system that operates similar to the ESRB that operates independently by paid volunteers and works just like ESRB? Ran industry wide and independent of any publisher, if an ESRB rating or proper rating from a particular region hasn’t been applied?

It could be easy to establish one. If you wanted to set that up, you just tell me. Even if you lack the resources at the moment. Because you might need it in order to convince a new payment processor to come onboard.

Has anyone contacted Coinbase?

No. I’m talking along the lines of a torn down version. Similar to NESTek or NESBag with the intention of distributing roms and immediately be playable on Steam without having to download another emulator.

Stay if you want to distribute a collection. The way both NESTek and NESBag work, you would need multiple copies of the emulator on your PC or each rom. I’m talking just one copy of an emulator with NES, SNES, GB, GBA, Genesis. Distributing your homebrew collection in one package instead 2, 3 or maybe more.

I got a question. How much effort would it take to make a torn down version of RetroBat that can be used for publishing homebrew roms for multiple retro consoles?

Thanks, I’m guessing custom .exe icons would be a good start. That would make it easy to  cater to non-Steam users that way multi-rom packs can just have multiple copies of the emulator as well as controller port 2 because there are some homebrew games with 2 player, lightgun and other functions

This is nearly the perfect rapper for a retro console rom, if Mesen had support for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive it would be perfect.

As for current functionality, we already know Mesen can emulate more than just the NES, this is just NES. Mesen as it stands can emulate NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, PCE, SMS, GG, WS, ColecoVision. Roms are still being made for all these and future support needs to be considered.

The other features just as aspect ratio, regions, filters, all the available input settings, shortcuts, a lot is missing. I know your goal was a torn down version of Mesen but this is too torn down. The publisher using this is gonna want all the features. Plus a possible multi-rom feature should be considered too. I say this mainly because publishers of homebrew games may not always like a one size fits all approach. You also mention Lowtek games using it to make their games playable on SteamDeck, their NesTek software allows you to change the icon for the .exe see if it’s possible to do that with with this.