Each time a significant awards ceremony draws close, one notices a clamor for introducing fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the hearts of followers with niche passions.
Another commentator has already made for a horror game category. That would rule. The same goes for tabletop games, representing someone's personal cause. However, I must insist when I prioritize because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing and important of all. This is the request: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and it will always start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason film award organizations avoid this approach. But it is an essential concession within the realm of video games, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of gaming accomplishments to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these award types effectively encompass many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Think about these this year’s best games, each quite distinct: building puzzles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games published annually that have no home at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- One classic puzzle game received no recognition in any category in 2014
- Another creative title was excluded that year
- A beloved organization game got ignored that year
- Just some brain-teasers managed to sneak into small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent compact experiences, yet the craft in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most engaged experiences worldwide maintaining this status for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges popular creative games for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, while interacting with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. It would be easy to populate five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these are games lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Logic title developers operate at the demanding boundary of video game design, creating some of the purest expressions within interactive entertainment. Just like cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
