Each time a significant awards ceremony draws close, there’s always a clamor to include fresh award types to recognize overlooked contributions and fill the hearts of followers who have specialized interests.
Another commentator previously argued supporting a scary games classification. That would rule. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, this being a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal is the most urgent and significant. This is the request: We need a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why cinema institutions don’t do it. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of gaming, which are so diverse they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards currently feature classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these award types effectively encompass numerous genres, making space possible for numerous titles.
Not so for puzzle games. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: structural challenges of one title, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. Which classification works between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist outstanding logic titles launched regularly lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything in 2014
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored that year
- Only a few logic titles scraped into independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent modest productions, but the art in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as the most-played games in the world continuing this trend for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges famous sandbox experiences for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, while interacting with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. You could fill multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent so many good games out.
Restating the point, these include experiences that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the hard edge interactive creation, producing among essential manifestations of gaming itself. Just like movie stunt professionals, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay 35 years.