Whenever a significant honors show approaches, you'll find a demand for the addition of new categories to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and fill the hearts of followers with niche passions.
A fellow writer made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. The same goes for tabletop games, representing a passionate advocate's mission. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize just as with other single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal is the most urgent above others. This is the request: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it’s very subjective, and inevitably spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that movie academies steer clear of genre categories. But it is an essential concession for the industry of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these six categories successfully include numerous genres, making space possible for most games within them.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears to put them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, all very different: building puzzles in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition for anything during that awards season
- Another imaginative release was excluded that year
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment recently
- Only a few brain-teasers scraped into independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often compact experiences, yet the craft behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games stand as most engaged experiences worldwide maintaining this status for many years.
The legendary block-stacking game competes with well-known building titles claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter that issue. You could fill five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these include experiences that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the demanding boundary of video game design, creating some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
