As any prominent awards ceremony approaches, one notices a clamor to include of new categories to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the passions of fans with niche passions.
My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, this being someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front since similar to blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal remains most pressing above others. The demand is this: We need an award type for logic-based games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Classifying creative works isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and it will always start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why movie academies don’t do it. However, it represents 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 compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories successfully include a lot of ground, making space possible accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, each quite distinct: building puzzles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges in another game. What category would fit them within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
Acknowledgment Issues
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers published annually that have no home at major award shows, if they accidentally match for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition for anything during that awards season
- Another creative title was excluded during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game was overlooked recently
- Just some brain-teasers managed to sneak into small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent small games, however the design in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most engaged experiences worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges well-known building titles for the title of highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and engaging across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. You could fill multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators operate at the hard edge interactive creation, producing among the purest expressions of the video game form. Just like cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
