As any major awards ceremony draws close, you'll find a clamor to include of new categories to acknowledge unsung work and satisfy the passions of fans dedicated to specific genres.
A fellow writer made the case supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. So would strategy board titles, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. However, I must insist when I prioritize since similar to blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case supporting my request remains most pressing above others. Here's the proposal: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and typically start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that film award organizations avoid this approach. Yet it remains an essential concession in the world of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards presently include award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these six categories successfully include a lot of ground, and you can find room for most games within them.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. No appropriate category exists to put them. Think about these recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: structural challenges in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers launched regularly that have no home at major award shows, if they accidentally match for categories like Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- One classic puzzle game received no recognition in any category during that awards season
- Another creative title was excluded in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked recently
- Just some logic titles managed to sneak into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often small games, however the design behind logic titles is of massive significance. Well-known matching games rank among most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals well-known building titles for the title of highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. You could fill multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these are games without proper classification in important events. Brain-teaser creators are working at the hard edge of video game design, producing among the purest expressions of gaming itself. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait 35 years.
