Each time a major prize-giving event approaches, you'll find a demand for the addition fresh award types to honor overlooked contributions and satisfy the passions of fans with niche passions.
A fellow writer has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. Equally deserving are board games, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward since similar to blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal is the most urgent and important of all. Here's the proposal: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and it will always spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. But it is an essential concession within the realm of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they hardly constitute one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Present Award Structure
Leading game ceremonies currently feature classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories actually cover a lot of ground, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Consider three of recent excellent titles, all very different: structural challenges of one title, intense tile-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Which classification works among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers released every year that have no home during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated completely in 2014
- Another imaginative release received no nominations that year
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked that year
- Just some brain-teasers scraped into independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're small games, yet the craft of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games stand as most engaged experiences globally and have been for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game competes with well-known building titles competing to become most purchased experience; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and engaging across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. One could readily select five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these represent titles that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators function at the hard edge of video game design, developing some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Comparable to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait decades.
