Each time a significant prize-giving event approaches, one notices an outcry for the addition fresh award types to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and satisfy the hearts of enthusiasts with niche passions.
Another commentator previously argued for a horror game category. It would be amazing. The same goes for board games, which is a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize since similar to blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal is the most urgent and important of all. The demand is this: We need an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. However, it represents an essential concession in the world of gaming, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies currently feature genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories effectively encompass numerous genres, making space possible for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges from a specific release, intense tile-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Which classification works within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games published annually that have no home during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated in any category in 2014
- Another imaginative release was excluded that year
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked that year
- Limited numbers of puzzle games barely qualified for independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're small games, however the design of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles count as most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience challenges well-known building titles claiming status as most purchased experience; it also contends for top gaming experience. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. You could fill multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these include experiences that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the demanding boundary of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations within interactive entertainment. Just like film action specialists, they warrant appreciation. Don't make them wait generations.
