Whenever a major awards ceremony draws close, you'll find an outcry to include fresh award types to honor overlooked contributions and delight the hearts of followers with niche passions.
My colleague previously argued for a horror game category. It would be amazing. The same goes for tabletop games, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification for why my demand is the most urgent and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and typically start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that film award organizations don’t do it. But it is an essential concession in the world of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range 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
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include classifications covering Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these award types actually cover numerous genres, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: structural challenges of one title, intense tile-matching of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Which classification works between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles released every year without proper recognition at major award shows, except when they manage to fit award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition for anything during that awards season
- Another imaginative release was excluded during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game got ignored recently
- Just some logic titles managed to sneak into independent or mobile categories
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're modest productions, however the design of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among most engaged experiences worldwide and have been for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges popular creative games for the title of most purchased experience; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and engaging with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these are games lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers are working at the challenging frontier interactive creation, creating some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait 35 years.
