Each time a major awards ceremony approaches, one notices an outcry for introducing fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the spirits of fans with niche passions.
A fellow writer previously argued supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, representing a dedicated supporter's campaign. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal remains most pressing above others. The demand is this: We need a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that cinema institutions avoid this approach. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise for the industry of video games, which are so diverse they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Existing Game Classification System
Leading game ceremonies currently feature classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these award types actually cover numerous genres, allowing placement for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Consider three of outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Which classification works between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers launched regularly lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive Indie races.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition for anything in 2014
- A different innovative game was excluded that year
- Popular arranging title got ignored recently
- Only a few brain-teasers barely qualified for independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're small games, however the design behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most engaged experiences globally maintaining this status for many years.
The famous puzzle experience rivals popular creative games for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. One could readily select a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these include experiences that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers function at the challenging frontier game development, creating some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay decades.
