Whenever a major prize-giving event draws close, one notices an outcry for introducing fresh award types to recognize unsung work and delight the passions of followers who have specialized interests.
Another commentator has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. So would strategy board titles, which is someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize just as with other single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand is the most urgent and significant. This is the request: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and typically generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that film award organizations don’t do it. However, it represents a necessary evil within the realm of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories successfully include a lot of ground, making space possible for most games within them.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Think about these recent excellent titles, all very different: building puzzles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games released every year without proper recognition in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated for anything during that awards season
- Another creative title was excluded during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment in 2021
- Limited numbers of puzzle games scraped into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often modest productions, yet the craft of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games rank among most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience challenges famous sandbox experiences claiming status as most purchased experience; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. You could fill multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories in important events. Logic title developers function at the challenging frontier game development, producing among the purest expressions of the video game form. Just like cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
