Curation Charter

Our promise

Beckstar is a curated front door for games made by independent builders in the AI era. Every game here was chosen by a humanwho played it, judged it worth your time, and checked how it was made. If it's on Beckstar, someone is vouching for it — by name, on the record, often on camera.

We don't list everything. That's the entire point.

What Beckstar is (and isn't)

• We are a discovery platform, not a store. We point you to games hosted elsewhere; we don't sell them, host them, or take a cut.

• We are curated, not crowdsourced into noise. A small shelf of good games beats an endless feed of maybe-games.

• We are honest about AI. Every game tells you how it was built, dimension by dimension, in plain language — and we verify it before we publish.

What gets listed

A game earns a place on Beckstar when it clears a simple bar: a real person made something worth playing, and was honest about how. Concretely, we look for:

• It's actually a game. It runs, it's playable to completion or to a clear loop, and it does what it says.

• There's a human point of view. A reason it exists — a mechanic, a mood, a joke, an idea — not just assembled parts.

• Craft you can feel. Effort and taste are visible somewhere in it, whatever tools were used to get there.

• Honest, complete disclosure. The builder has told us how AI was (or wasn't) used across every dimension we track, and it holds up when we check.

What does not get listed

• Slop — low-effort output shoved out the door with no human judgment, taste, or testing.

• Asset flips and clones — reskinned templates or copies trading on someone else's work.

• Dishonest disclosure — claiming "hand-made" when it isn't, or hiding AI use to dodge criticism. Misrepresentation is the one thing that gets you removed and kept off.

• Anything broken, deceptive, infringing, or harmful — non-functional builds, scams, stolen content, or hateful material.

Tools are never the disqualifier. Dishonesty and the absence of human craft are. A game can be heavily AI-generated and earn a place here if it's good and the builder is upfront about it.

How curation works

1. 1

   A game is submitted (by its developer or flagged by us).

2. 2

   It enters review — a curator plays it and checks it against this charter.

3. 3

   If it clears the bar, the curator writes a Curator's Note: what it is, why it's interesting, and how it was built.

4. 4

   For flagship picks, the curator also records a short video review showing the game and stating its AI disclosure out loud.

5. 5

   Only then is it published. Nothing auto-publishes from a form.

A submission is never a guarantee. We'd rather keep the shelf small and trusted than large and hollow.

The AI Disclosure standard

We treat AI as a method to be transparent about — not a verdict, and not a thing to hide. Disclosure here is a badge of integrity, not a scarlet letter. A game that's proudly hand-made in some areas and AI-assisted in others is exactly what we want to show you clearly.

Every published game carries a disclosure across five dimensions, each set to one of three levels:

Developers may add an optional note to explain nuance in their own words. We verify disclosure during review, and a game cannot be published without complete disclosure across all five dimensions. If we find disclosure was falsified, the game is removed.

For developers

Getting accepted into Beckstar is meant to be a credential. Because players trust the shelf, a place on it is worth more than a listing on a directory that takes everyone. To be considered:

• Submit through /submit with your honest disclosure across all five dimensions.

• Expect a real review, and sometimes a “not yet.”

• If you’re accepted, you’ll get a curator’s note, a place on the shelf, and — for some — a video feature framed to put your work in the best honest light.

We built the disclosure standard partly to protectgood builders: when you're upfront, the badge defends you against the “is this slop?” suspicion that follows AI-era games around.

Keeping us honest

Trust runs both ways. If you think a listing's disclosure is wrong, or a game doesn't belong, tell us. Verified problems get fixed in public. This charter is a living document — when the standard changes, the version at the top of this page changes with it.