As any major awards ceremony nears, you'll find a clamor to include fresh award types to honor overlooked contributions and delight the passions of fans with niche passions.
My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. Equally deserving are board games, which is someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize since similar to single-minded supporters, I possess a compelling case for why my demand remains most pressing above others. Here's the proposal: There should be a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Classifying creative works isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and typically spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. But it is a necessary evil within the realm of interactive entertainment, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, and for games of all stripes to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards presently include genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these award types actually cover a lot of ground, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to put them. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens outstanding logic titles released every year lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything during that awards season
- A different innovative game was excluded that year
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked that year
- Limited numbers of logic titles barely qualified for independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often compact experiences, but the art of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles rank among the most-played games in the world continuing this trend for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience competes with well-known building titles competing to become highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, while interacting across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Logic titles wouldn't face that issue. It would be easy to populate five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these represent titles that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers are working at the challenging frontier game development, developing some of essential manifestations of gaming itself. Just like cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay generations.
