As any prominent awards ceremony approaches, you'll find a demand for introducing of new categories to recognize unsung work and fill the passions of followers dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague made the case for a horror game category. It would be amazing. So would strategy board titles, representing someone's personal cause. However, I must insist for pushing forward since similar to single-minded supporters, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing above others. The demand is this: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and inevitably start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise for the industry of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they barely qualify a single creative category.
For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies offer these classifications covering Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories successfully include many game types, and you can find room for most games within them.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Which classification works within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
Acknowledgment Issues
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games released every year without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition completely in 2014
- A different innovative game was excluded in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked that year
- Just some brain-teasers managed to sneak into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent modest productions, yet the craft behind logic titles is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles rank among most popular titles in the world and have been for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience challenges well-known building titles competing to become highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. You could fill a field of five interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these represent titles that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers are working at the challenging frontier of video game design, producing among the purest expressions of gaming itself. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
