Each time a prominent awards ceremony approaches, you'll find a clamor for the addition of new categories to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the passions of fans who have specialized interests.
Another commentator has already made supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. So would strategy board titles, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front just as with other single-minded supporters, I possess a compelling case for why my demand is the most urgent above others. The demand is this: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. There’s a reason cinema institutions avoid this approach. However, it represents a necessary evil for the industry of video games, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories actually cover many game types, making space possible for most games within them.
Different situation exists for puzzle games. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Consider three of recent excellent titles, all very different: structural challenges in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
Numerous examples exist outstanding logic titles launched regularly lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition in any category in 2014
- Another imaginative release missed out in 2019
- Popular arranging title received no acknowledgment in 2021
- Just some brain-teasers scraped into independent or mobile categories
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, however the design behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles count as most popular titles in the world maintaining this status for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with famous sandbox experiences for the title of highest-selling title ever; it also contends for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face that issue. You could fill a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these represent titles without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers are working at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait decades.
