Whenever a major honors show nears, there’s always a demand for introducing fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the passions of followers with niche passions.
A fellow writer made the case supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. The same goes for tabletop games, which is someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front since similar to blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand stands as crucial above others. The demand is this: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it’s very subjective, and typically start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. But it is an essential concession in the world of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they hardly constitute a single creative category.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these classifications successfully include many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Not so for puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Think about these recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. Which classification works between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens outstanding logic titles launched regularly that have no home at major award shows, if they accidentally match award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked in any category in 2014
- Another imaginative release missed out in 2019
- Popular arranging title received no acknowledgment recently
- Limited numbers of brain-teasers managed to sneak into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent modest productions, but the art behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles rank among the most-played games globally maintaining this status for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game competes with well-known building titles competing to become most purchased experience; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these include experiences that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the challenging frontier game development, developing some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay decades.
