As any significant awards ceremony draws close, you'll find an outcry for introducing fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and delight the spirits of fans dedicated to specific genres.
A fellow writer made the case for a horror game category. That would rule. The same goes for strategy board titles, representing someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front because like all blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case for why my demand remains most pressing and significant. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and inevitably spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that film award organizations avoid this approach. However, it represents a necessary evil within the realm of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify a single creative category.
For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Existing Game Classification System
Leading game ceremonies presently include award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these classifications successfully include numerous genres, making space possible accommodating various experiences.
Not so for puzzle games. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Consider three of this year’s best games, each quite distinct: structural challenges from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges in another game. What category would fit them within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
Acknowledgment Issues
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers launched regularly lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition for anything that year
- Another creative title received no nominations that year
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored in 2021
- Only a few puzzle games managed to sneak into independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent compact experiences, but the art of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles count as most popular titles globally continuing this trend for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games for the title of highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. You could fill five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent so many good games out.
Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers function at the demanding boundary of video game design, creating some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
