As any significant prize-giving event approaches, there’s always an outcry for introducing fresh award types to recognize underappreciated efforts and satisfy the hearts of fans with niche passions.
My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. So would board games, which is a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist when I prioritize just as with other dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case supporting my request is the most urgent and significant. The demand is this: We need a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works is not a science; it remains highly personal, and it will always spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. But it is an essential concession in the world of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards presently include classifications covering Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories successfully include many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Consider three of this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. What category would fit them within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers released every year that have no home during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive Indie races.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked for anything in 2014
- Another creative title was excluded during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked recently
- Just some logic titles barely qualified for niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent small games, yet the craft behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games stand as most popular titles worldwide continuing this trend for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience challenges popular creative games competing to become highest-selling title ever; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have such difficulty. It would be easy to populate a field of five interesting, varied, worthy titles annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers are working at the hard edge interactive creation, creating some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Just like film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
