Each time a major awards ceremony draws close, there’s always an outcry for introducing fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the hearts of fans with niche passions.
A fellow writer made the case for a horror game category. It would be amazing. So would strategy board titles, representing a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize since similar to blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case for why my demand stands as crucial and important of all. The demand is this: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; it’s very subjective, and it will always start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of interactive entertainment, showing incredible range they barely qualify as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, 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 genre categories for Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these award types actually cover numerous genres, allowing placement for numerous titles.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: structural challenges in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles published annually lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything that year
- Another imaginative release received no nominations that year
- A beloved organization game got ignored in 2021
- Just some logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're small games, but the art in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Well-known matching games count as most popular titles in the world and have been for an extended period.
The famous puzzle experience rivals popular creative games for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and engaging across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. One could readily select five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories in important events. Brain-teaser creators function at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Comparable to movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
