Each time a prominent awards ceremony nears, one notices a demand to include fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the spirits of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
My colleague previously argued supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are board games, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward just as with other dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and typically generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why movie academies don’t do it. However, it represents a necessary evil in the world of gaming, showing incredible range they hardly constitute a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards currently feature award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these six categories actually cover numerous genres, making space possible for numerous titles.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to put them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles from a specific release, intense tile-matching in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. What category would fit them between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers released every year lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything that year
- Another imaginative release missed out that year
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Just some logic titles barely qualified for independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often compact experiences, however the design of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles count as most engaged experiences worldwide continuing this trend for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with famous sandbox experiences claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. It would be easy to populate five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators function at the demanding boundary of video game design, creating some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
