As any major honors show approaches, you'll find an outcry to include fresh award types to honor overlooked contributions and delight the spirits of followers who have specialized interests.
My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. So would strategy board titles, this being a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal is the most urgent above others. The demand is this: We need a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and typically spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. There’s a reason film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise for the industry of video games, which are so diverse they hardly constitute as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications actually cover a lot of ground, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to put them. Think about these this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles of one title, intense tile-matching of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. What category would fit them within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens outstanding logic titles released every year lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated completely that year
- Another creative title received no nominations that year
- A beloved organization game got ignored that year
- Just some puzzle games managed to sneak into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often small games, however the design in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles count as most popular titles globally continuing this trend for over a decade.
The legendary block-stacking game competes with famous sandbox experiences for the title of highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. One could readily select multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these are games without proper classification at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators function at the hard edge of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations of gaming itself. Just like film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay decades.
