As any major honors show draws close, you'll find an outcry to include of new categories to honor overlooked contributions and satisfy the passions of enthusiasts dedicated to specific genres.
A fellow writer made the case supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. The same goes for strategy board titles, this being someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front since similar to blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request remains most pressing above others. Here's the proposal: We need an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it’s very subjective, and it will always start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that movie academies don’t do it. Yet it remains an essential concession within the realm of gaming, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies offer these award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications actually cover a lot of ground, and you can find room for most games within them.
This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Consider three of this year’s best games, each quite distinct: structural challenges in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, engaging interpersonal challenges in another game. Which classification works among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly that have no home in entertainment awards, if they accidentally match for categories like Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything in 2014
- Another creative title received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored that year
- Only a few logic titles managed to sneak into independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often small games, but the art in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles stand as most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for many years.
The famous puzzle experience rivals well-known building titles competing to become best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, while interacting with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. One could readily select five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers function at the challenging frontier of video game design, producing among essential manifestations of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
