Whenever a major awards ceremony draws close, you'll find an outcry for introducing additional classifications to recognize underappreciated efforts and satisfy the hearts of followers with niche passions.
My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. So would board games, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request stands as crucial and important of all. The demand is this: We need a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that cinema institutions don’t do it. But it is a necessary evil for the industry of gaming, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, allowing placement for most games within them.
Different situation exists for puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. Which classification works between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers launched regularly without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely in 2014
- Another imaginative release was excluded that year
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked recently
- Only a few brain-teasers managed to sneak into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're compact experiences, but the art behind logic titles is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game rivals popular creative games competing to become highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. It would be easy to populate five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles annually without trouble — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories in important events. Puzzle game makers operate at the challenging frontier game development, producing among the purest expressions of gaming itself. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
