As any prominent honors show nears, there’s always a clamor to include of new categories to honor overlooked contributions and fill the hearts of enthusiasts with niche passions.
A fellow writer has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. The same goes for strategy board titles, which is a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all single-minded supporters, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal is the most urgent and significant. The demand is this: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why cinema institutions don’t do it. Yet it remains an essential concession within the realm of video games, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards offer these genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these award types successfully include numerous genres, making space possible accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles in a particular game, intense tile-matching in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. Which classification works between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Acknowledgment Issues
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, if they accidentally match award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked for anything that year
- Another creative title missed out in 2019
- A beloved organization game got ignored that year
- Only a few logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most engaged experiences worldwide maintaining this status for an extended period.
The famous puzzle experience challenges famous sandbox experiences competing to become highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. It would be easy to populate a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
Restating the point, these represent titles that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers function at the demanding boundary interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Just like film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
