Each time a significant honors show nears, there’s always a clamor for the addition additional classifications to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the hearts of fans dedicated to specific genres.
A fellow writer has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. Equally deserving are tabletop games, which is a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward just as with other blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal is the most urgent and significant. The demand is this: We need a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works is not a science; it remains highly personal, and inevitably start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that cinema institutions don’t do it. But it is an essential concession in the world of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they barely qualify as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, allowing placement for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, all very different: the architectural riddles of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges from additional release. What category would fit them within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
Acknowledgment Issues
Numerous examples exist outstanding logic titles launched regularly that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated completely in 2014
- A different innovative game received no nominations that year
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked that year
- Limited numbers of logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're modest productions, but the art in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as the most-played games worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience competes with well-known building titles for the title of highest-selling title ever; it also contends for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, while interacting with almost every other genre.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. One could readily select multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these include experiences that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers function at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Just like cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait 35 years.
