Whenever a prominent awards ceremony draws close, you'll find a demand to include of new categories to recognize overlooked contributions and satisfy the spirits of fans dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize since similar to single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand remains most pressing and significant. This is the request: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why movie academies steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise in the world of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards currently feature award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these award types successfully include a lot of ground, making space possible for most games within them.
Not so for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Consider three of this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Where could they possibly go among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games published annually without proper recognition in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything in 2014
- Another imaginative release missed out in 2019
- A beloved organization game got ignored that year
- Only a few puzzle games scraped into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often small games, however the design behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most popular titles globally and have been for many years.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges famous sandbox experiences claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it also contends as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, and engaging with diverse game types.
The Solution and Justification
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. You could fill multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators operate at the challenging frontier game development, producing among most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
