As any major awards ceremony nears, you'll find a clamor for introducing fresh award types to recognize overlooked contributions and fill the spirits of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer has already made supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, which is a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist when I prioritize because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal remains most pressing and important of all. The demand is this: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and typically generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason film award organizations don’t do it. However, it represents an essential concession in the world of video games, showing incredible range they barely qualify one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards offer these award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories successfully include numerous genres, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles of one title, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games released every year that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely that year
- A different innovative game was excluded that year
- A beloved organization game got ignored recently
- Only a few logic titles scraped into independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent small games, yet the craft in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among most engaged experiences globally and have been for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and engaging with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter that issue. You could fill multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these represent titles without proper classification at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators function at the demanding boundary of video game design, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
