Each time a major prize-giving event draws close, one notices a clamor to include additional classifications to honor unsung work and satisfy the passions of followers who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are board games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist when I prioritize since similar to blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing and significant. The demand is this: We need a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and it will always start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that film award organizations don’t do it. But it is an unavoidable compromise for the industry of gaming, that demonstrate such variety it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards presently include classifications covering Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, making space possible accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Think about these recent excellent titles, all very different: building puzzles of one title, intense tile-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. What category would fit them within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens outstanding logic titles launched regularly lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match award groups including Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated in any category in 2014
- A different innovative game received no nominations that year
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment recently
- Only a few logic titles barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often compact experiences, but the art in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as most popular titles in the world maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with famous sandbox experiences for the title of most purchased experience; it also contends for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, while interacting with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. You could fill multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers function at the demanding boundary of video game design, creating some of essential manifestations of gaming itself. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait decades.
