Each time a major awards ceremony approaches, you'll find a demand for introducing additional classifications to recognize underappreciated efforts and fill the hearts of enthusiasts dedicated to specific genres.
A fellow writer previously argued for a horror game category. It would be amazing. So would tabletop games, this being someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request remains most pressing and important of all. The demand is this: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and it will always spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that movie academies steer clear of genre categories. But it is an unavoidable compromise in the world of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these classifications covering Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications actually cover many game types, and you can find room for most games within them.
Not so for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles of one title, intense tile-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers launched regularly lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated completely in 2014
- A different innovative game received no nominations that year
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked in 2021
- Limited numbers of brain-teasers barely qualified for independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent small games, but the art of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most popular titles globally maintaining this status for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. It would be easy to populate a field of five interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these include experiences that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers operate at the challenging frontier of video game design, producing among the purest expressions of gaming itself. Just like film action specialists, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay decades.
