Content descriptors are a lot more useful than trying to decide what's appropriate for age X in hundreds or thousands of cultures across the world. I'd add gore (though that could fall under graphic violence) and nudity (because that's orthogonal to sexual content). Hope this helps!

My suggestion would be checkboxes for common bulletpoints, with fields for adding additional information. I'd avoid including a "severity" or judgement call on those bulletpoints - "Sexual Content" instead of "Explicit Sexual Content", since details are often highly circumstantial.

We'd end up with "Violence" (chosen from bulletpoint) - "Contains one instance of low fidelity gore" (entered by developer into a text field).

Would also, for accessibility purposes, suggest including a highlighted checkbox for flashing lights/photosensitive epilepsy.

Why not use existing rating system like the IARC?

https://www.globalratings.com/for-developers.aspx

developers like me who have their game on Google Play could just re-use the rating they already have (it's required on Google Play) so it would be instant.

I never got the use of ages. Of course there's legal ages for different things in different places at different thresholds (way too many to keep up with) and there's outright bans of things in some places. It seems to me it would be simpler to just have opt-ins for various types of content where the user has to confirm that the content is legal for them.... especially when there are so so many different types of content that is regulated around the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a

I see two distinct issues:

• The current NSFW tagging option is not being used as much as it should due to it being hidden as metadata
• The current NSFW tagging option, regardless of its visibility, is too vaguely defined, as people have different definitions for what constitutes NSFW content

To me, both these have individual answers. Let's look at the first one. I went to a game that I believe should be marked as NSFW, which was You Must be 18 or Older to Enter. Nowhere on this page is a warning flagged for NSFW content, nowhere in any expandable section is this apparent (the developer did include tags for Erotic and Porn, however), and nowhere on the page when I download the game am I warned of its potential content. Only in reading the game's description and its title am I made aware that this game might not be appropriate for all ages. To me, that is an issue on the front-end design and the user experience, but that is a bit out of scope for this comment.

I propose we move the current NSFW checkbox from metadata to the main page where you edit the title, description, etc. For now this would be a simple checkbox, just as it is already. In making this move, though the definition of what constitutes NSFW may still be arbitrary, it should at least lead to more developers selecting the option, thus increasing the set of games on itch tagged NSFW.

After some time passes, statistics can be aggregated. How many new games uploaded were tagged NSFW versus before? How many older games that were not tagged NSFW had updates and then were tagged NSFW as a result of the change in visibility? To me, this is useful information in understanding how developers currently interact with the tools that already exist. While on this thread we have some limited insight and suggestions, I think I am most interested in understanding why a developer would click the NSFW button. What content did they feel defined NSFW? We can speculate on the obvious ones like nudity, but perhaps in probing the developers who do have games marked NSFW, we can better understand their decision making process. We can similarly probe users (with accounts) who play NSFW games, and survey them as well. Naturally, the surveys should be anonymous.

In probing for this information, we can then better learn what filters for NSFW should exist. As stated before, nudity is an obvious one, but I believe some not-so-obvious options exist in this space, too. Once an encompassing set of NSFW filters/tags is determined, then the developer dashboard can be updated such that those fields are available.

I would rather have a static set of NSFW filters, ones that the developer cannot add to, unlike the freeform and very arbitrary tagging system that exists currently. This is because if I want to filter out certain NSFW games or books, I wish to do so rigorously. If everybody can tag things arbitrarily, then somebody can tag something with a typo, or include a specific tag that I may not have heard of, whereas rigid filters like "nudity" or "drug use" are more universal.

I do not think specifying age guidelines like ESRB is a good idea unless forced by law. If the law forces this decision, then a much more rigorous process must be taken, akin to Google Play's questionnaire all developers must fill out for their games. The resultant ratings that emerge differ by country, sometimes in surprising ways, and the entire process is slow and not great to go through. It already is daunting for a developer to update their game and fill out every field that exists, but I would not want to introduce too many changes too quickly, as I do not wish to burden the developer with more noise they must work through when their end goal is to simply release their game.

Long time since I used the site but wanted to chime in anyways.

In general I'm a fan of simplified systems and not slang nomenclatures, so I what I would to is to tag all the games as "All Ages" by default, and add an opt-in "Adult" or "Mature" tag/system. If needed, add a "Teenage" tag too. This system should be pretty visible/a major requirement.
Reports should catch devs that forget, decide to not tag, or simply didn't update their games.

I strongly suggest not using any specific numbers (like "18+" or "18 an up") since, as mentioned, both laws and culture are different by country; so I think that a bit of ambiguity would really help. Similar case to "NSFW", some cultures might have no idea what's that, better to stick to some pre-2000 terminology :P

As an added suggestion, we could also have a filter for Mature games (both see it and don't see it). Maybe have an opt-in setting to enable seeing them? Maybe that will help with some countries' laws? Some kind of futureproofing?

For now I have no opinion on the checkboxes for content. I think it will be good to have but I'd consider it an extra, after the other systems have been deployed.

GameJolt has a set of radio buttons where they ask the developers to self-rate their games and depending on the selected options, there's a corresponding "rating" image generated along with the contents of the game ala ESRB ratings. Might be worth a look.

Here's a screenshot:

https://screenshots.firefox.com/BXJIoWs4l2uk71t0/gamejolt.com

While I get the inclination to think of this in a dev perspective, I think it's ultimately the players who are more important to consider here as it is to their benefit. Yes, it would be good to have a system that is easy to fill out by devs and doesn't take half an hour per game, but if that leads to a subpar content rating system, it's not that useful to implement. 

My own inclination in this case is to have some broader subject matter tags that can be chosen, after which some refinement tags are suggested to help branch out to more specific subjects. It should also be possible to add multiple subset subjects. 

Some suggestions for categories and subsets: 

• Violence: cartoon/fantasy violence, violence towards children, intimate partner violence, etc.
• Sexual content: heterosexual sex, homosexual sex, intersex sex participant(s), transgender sex participant(s), group sex, masturbation, fetish, etc.
• Alcohol/drug use: marijuana, alcohol, smoking, hard drugs, etc.
• Coarse language: sexual innuendo, sexually explicit language, blasphemy, slurs, etc.
• Mental health/abuse: child abuse, domestic abuse, depression, self harm, etc.
• Common phobias: spiders, insects, needles, etc.

This would allow the developers to fill out the contents in broad strokes if they aren't interested in being super specific or want to avoid spoiling their games, but it also allows them to get more specific for players who asked about specific subject matter or if they want to be specific in the first place. The one flaw I can think of is that some subjects that fall under the broad categories might apply to multiple broad categories (rape would fall under violence, sexual content and abuse, for example), so it would be good to have some subjects automatically apply more broad categories when picked.

I personally think age limits are only useful in a legal sense, as different people mature at different rates. I'm not particularly interested in age ratings as a result. The problem I have with the categories of "mature" and "adult" is that the line between them is very blurry for me personally, especially for games. I would personally only mark with ages or age categories if a product is intended to only be consumed by legal adults (basically: porn).

As some of the comments above have stated, I'm also a huge fan of forgoing age based categories and focusing more on specific content warnings. This will make it easier for people who are comfortable with one type of "explicit" content to filter results to show games that they're more likely to feel comfortable playing and enjoy.

Potentially losing a section of an age group that would enjoy your content just because it's labeled 16+ or 18+, or thinking that the content will be watered down just because it's 13+, hurts both players and developers. 

Instead of having a specific age, or age bracket, for games - maybe the game could have a rating score that indicates the general type of content expected.

Blips & Chitz: World of Adventures (7/100)
Murder & Mayhem (83/100)
Weed Smoking Simulator (42/100)
Wholesome Fun: Part 2 (0/100)

For example, you could be fairly granular with content questions and assign them a weight (value). This could be compiled with other values based on the type of content.

Cartoon Violence [None (0)] [Mild (1)] [Moderate (2)] [Intense (3)]
Fantasy Violence [None (0)] [Mild (1)] [Moderate (2)] [Intense (3)]
Alcohol [None (0)] [References (1)] [Usage (2)]
Drugs [None (0)] [References (1)] [Usage (2)]
Gambling [None (0)] [Simulated (3)] [Real (15)]

You could then compound the result to account for multiple items of the list, rather than let the developer directly set their own rating.

ex. Alcohol [References (1)] + Drugs [Usage (2)] would result in a rating score of 3. However, because both drugs and alcohol are involved, an additional 2 points are added; resulting in a final score of 5.

Not sure if this might be more complicated than what you are looking for in terms of implementation and usage.
Additionally, you could then display these warnings somewhere for the game

Pirate Simulator: Swashbucklin' Adventures

Content Warning Rating: 32/100
This game contains

- moderate depictions of fantasy violence.
- references to alcohol.
- mild swearing.
- moderate cartoon violence.

Not many have talk about it but what if lootbox become forcibly into laws, right now ESRB will not accept lootbox as gambling thus leading government to force it into law. This is a problem with all content rankings not such ESRB, if these content rankings do not do their job it leads to complex rules and laws. This is why lootbox is a mess in gaming, while it is ok in the USA not so much in China or Japan that have rules and if your game falls into it you are in risk of not only losing customers but money too.

I do not think you should only use the ESRB, it is a flaw system from the very start since any kid can buy AO games online or M rated games on steam store.

If you really want to do this right you got to have the IARC which protects game developers. This system can give warnings like games having nazi symbols, violence, noise that may not be ok to someone who went to war, realistic like killing, etc. ESRB does not have those things because like i said it is a fail system.

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)