Each time a significant awards ceremony approaches, you'll find an outcry to include of new categories to acknowledge unsung work and satisfy the hearts of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
Another commentator has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. The same goes for board games, which is someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front since similar to blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request remains most pressing and significant. The demand is this: We need an award type for logic-based games.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it’s very subjective, and it will always spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that cinema institutions don’t do it. Yet it remains a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards currently feature classifications covering Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these classifications successfully include many game types, and you can find room for numerous titles.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to put them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens outstanding logic titles published annually lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, except when they manage to fit award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition in any category in 2014
- Another creative title was excluded that year
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment in 2021
- Just some brain-teasers scraped into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent compact experiences, yet the craft of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most engaged experiences in the world continuing this trend for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges well-known building titles for the title of most purchased experience; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators function at the demanding boundary of video game design, developing some of the purest expressions within interactive entertainment. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
