As any major honors show nears, one notices a clamor for the addition fresh award types to recognize overlooked contributions and fill the passions of enthusiasts with niche passions.
A fellow writer has already made supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are tabletop games, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request is the most urgent and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works is not a science; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that film award organizations avoid this approach. Yet it remains an essential concession for the industry of gaming, which are so diverse they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Existing Game Classification System
Leading game ceremonies offer these award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories successfully include many game types, making space possible for most games within them.
Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers published annually that have no home during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated in any category that year
- Another creative title was excluded in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment in 2021
- Only a few brain-teasers managed to sneak into independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most popular titles worldwide and have been for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game rivals popular creative games competing to become best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter that issue. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these are games without proper classification at major gaming awards. Logic title developers are working at the challenging frontier of video game design, creating some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Comparable to movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
