Whenever a significant awards ceremony nears, you'll find a clamor for introducing additional classifications to honor underappreciated efforts and delight the hearts of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer previously argued supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. The same goes for tabletop games, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case supporting my request stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. There’s a reason cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains a necessary evil in the world of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they hardly constitute as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these genre categories for Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these classifications actually cover many game types, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Think about these this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles of one title, the pulse-pounding block-matching in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Acknowledgment Issues
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games released every year that have no home during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated completely during that awards season
- A different innovative game was excluded in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
- Just some logic titles managed to sneak into independent or mobile categories
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent small games, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games rank among the most-played games worldwide continuing this trend for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience challenges famous sandbox experiences competing to become best-selling game of all time; it also contends for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these are games lacking appropriate categories in important events. Puzzle game makers operate at the demanding boundary game development, developing some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
