As any prominent honors show draws close, you'll find a demand to include additional classifications to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and fill the hearts of followers who have specialized interests.
Another commentator previously argued for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. So would strategy board titles, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward just as with other blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand stands as crucial and significant. This is the request: We need a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise within the realm of video games, which are so diverse they hardly constitute as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these award types successfully include a lot of ground, making space possible accommodating various experiences.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, all very different: structural challenges of one title, the pulse-pounding block-matching in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers released every year lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated completely that year
- Another creative title received no nominations that year
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored in 2021
- Only a few brain-teasers barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're modest productions, but the art in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games rank among the most-played games in the world maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges popular creative games claiming status as best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and engaging across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have such difficulty. One could readily select multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers function at the demanding boundary of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait 35 years.
