Whenever a significant honors show approaches, you'll find an outcry for the addition fresh award types to recognize unsung work and satisfy the hearts of followers with niche passions.
Another commentator made the case supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. The same goes for strategy board titles, which is a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist when I prioritize just as with other blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case for why my demand stands as crucial above others. The demand is this: We need a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; it’s very subjective, and inevitably generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why film award organizations avoid this approach. But it is an unavoidable compromise for the industry of gaming, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards presently include classifications covering Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these classifications successfully include many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Not so for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, each quite distinct: structural challenges of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Which classification works between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely in 2014
- Another imaginative release was excluded in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Limited numbers of puzzle games barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're small games, yet the craft of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as the most-played games worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.
The legendary block-stacking game rivals well-known building titles competing to become most purchased experience; it also contends as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, while interacting with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. It would be easy to populate five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these represent titles without proper classification at major gaming awards. Logic title developers operate at the challenging frontier game development, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
