Should iPhone/Touch Games be evaluated by the ESRB?

[famousringo]

jarrod said:

famousringo said:
As I understand it, participation in the ESRB is voluntary.

Since I'm pro-indie game development, I say ESRB ratings should in no way be mandatory for games in Apple's App Store.

App Store is a closed platform though, Apple themselves aren't really "pro-indie game development" when you get down to it.

I don't see what being 'closed' has to do with it.

Apple gives away dev kits to anybody who owns a Mac and provides fast, easy access to a large and highly monetized distribution network for a $99 fee and 30% of revenues. An indie developer on an 'open' PC platform has to figure out his own methods for distributing his product and taking payment, and those are huge barriers for people who are better at programming than they are at business. In this respect, the 'restrictive and closed' platform is much more accessible than the 'open' PC platform where a developer is free to solve all these problems himself.

The whole reason why people piss and moan about the thousands of crappy games on the App Store is because the barriers to entry are insanely low for indie developers. Adding a requirement for ESRB rating would multiply up-front fees by an order of magnitude while requiring more planning on the part of the developer.