Whenever a significant awards ceremony nears, you'll find a demand for the addition fresh award types to recognize underappreciated efforts and satisfy the passions of fans who have specialized interests.
Another commentator has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. The same goes for strategy board titles, this being someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward just as with other dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification supporting my request remains most pressing above others. Here's the proposal: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and it will always spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. There’s a reason film award organizations don’t do it. But it is an essential concession within the realm of gaming, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
Prominent interactive entertainment events currently feature classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these award types actually cover numerous genres, and you can find room for most games within them.
Different situation exists for puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Which classification works among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers launched regularly that have no home at major award shows, if they accidentally match for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition completely that year
- Another imaginative release missed out that year
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored that year
- Only a few brain-teasers managed to sneak into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're modest productions, yet the craft in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience challenges famous sandbox experiences competing to become best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, while interacting with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. It would be easy to populate five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators are working at the challenging frontier of video game design, producing among most fundamental forms of the video game form. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait generations.
