As any prominent prize-giving event approaches, there’s always a demand for introducing fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the hearts of enthusiasts with niche passions.
A fellow writer has already made supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. So would tabletop games, this being someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request remains most pressing and important of all. The demand is this: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; it’s very subjective, and typically spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason film award organizations don’t do it. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise in the world of video games, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies currently feature award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these classifications effectively encompass a lot of ground, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens outstanding logic titles released every year that have no home during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated in any category that year
- Another creative title received no nominations during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked that year
- Just some brain-teasers barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're small games, yet the craft in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games count as most engaged experiences globally and have been for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with famous sandbox experiences competing to become most purchased experience; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles annually without trouble — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge game development, creating some of the purest expressions of gaming itself. Similar to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
