As any prominent honors show approaches, you'll find a demand to include additional classifications to honor unsung work and satisfy the spirits of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer previously argued for a horror game category. It would be amazing. So would strategy board titles, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request remains most pressing and important of all. Here's the proposal: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. But it is a necessary evil within the realm of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they hardly constitute a single creative category.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these classifications effectively encompass numerous genres, making space possible accommodating various experiences.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: building puzzles from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games released every year that have no home in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated completely that year
- Another creative title was excluded during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Just some brain-teasers scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles rank among most engaged experiences worldwide and have been for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience competes with well-known building titles for the title of highest-selling title ever; it also contends for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, while interacting with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face that issue. You could fill multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
Restating the point, these are games that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers are working at the challenging frontier of video game design, creating some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
