As any significant prize-giving event nears, you'll find an outcry to include fresh award types to recognize underappreciated efforts and fill the spirits of followers who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer previously argued for a horror game category. That would rule. The same goes for tabletop games, which is someone's personal cause. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front since similar to single-minded supporters, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal remains most pressing and significant. Here's the proposal: We need a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise for the industry of gaming, which are so diverse they hardly constitute 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, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies offer these genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these award types effectively encompass numerous genres, making space possible for most games within them.
This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Consider three of outstanding current releases, all very different: structural challenges from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. What category would fit them within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly that have no home in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked for anything that year
- A different innovative game missed out that year
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked recently
- Just some puzzle games managed to sneak into independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent compact experiences, however the design in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as the most-played games in the world and have been for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals famous sandbox experiences competing to become highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, while interacting across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. One could readily select multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
Restating the point, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories 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. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay decades.
