Whenever a prominent prize-giving event approaches, you'll find a clamor to include fresh award types to recognize underappreciated efforts and satisfy the spirits of fans with niche passions.
Another commentator has already made for a horror game category. It would be amazing. So would board games, which is a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand is the most urgent and important of all. Here's the proposal: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and inevitably spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise in the world of video games, which are so diverse they hardly constitute as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these award types effectively encompass numerous genres, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
Not so for puzzle games. No suitable classification appears to put them. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, all very different: building puzzles of one title, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. What category would fit them between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers released every year without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated in any category during that awards season
- Another creative title received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored that year
- Only a few brain-teasers scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent small games, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles count as the most-played games globally continuing this trend for many years.
The legendary block-stacking game competes with famous sandbox experiences claiming status as best-selling game of all time; it also contends as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers operate at the challenging frontier game development, developing some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Comparable to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait generations.
