Whenever a major awards ceremony nears, you'll find a clamor to include fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and fill the spirits of fans who have specialized interests.
My colleague made the case for a horror game category. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are board games, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward just as with other dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing and significant. This is the request: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and typically generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason film award organizations don’t do it. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise within the realm of gaming, which are so diverse they barely qualify one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these six categories actually cover a lot of ground, making space possible for numerous titles.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, all very different: the architectural riddles of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers published annually without proper recognition in entertainment awards, if they accidentally match for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked in any category during that awards season
- A different innovative game missed out that year
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment recently
- Just some brain-teasers scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent small games, yet the craft in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles stand as the most-played games globally and have been for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience rivals well-known building titles claiming status as best-selling game of all time; it also contends as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. You could fill multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, since numerous excellent so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these are games without proper classification in important events. Logic title developers are working at the challenging frontier interactive creation, producing among most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait 35 years.
