As any significant prize-giving event draws close, you'll find a clamor to include of new categories to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the passions of followers who have specialized interests.
Another commentator made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. The same goes for board games, this being someone's personal cause. However, I must insist when I prioritize since similar to blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal remains most pressing and important of all. Here's the proposal: We need a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and it will always start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason cinema institutions don’t do it. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise for the industry of video games, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards currently feature genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories successfully include many game types, and you can find room for numerous titles.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears to put them. Think about these this year’s best games, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges in another game. What category would fit them among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.
Acknowledgment Issues
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games published annually lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated for anything that year
- Another imaginative release missed out in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked in 2021
- Limited numbers of logic titles scraped into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often modest productions, yet the craft of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles stand as most popular titles in the world continuing this trend for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with well-known building titles competing to become best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. You could fill multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers are working at the hard edge of video game design, developing some of most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. Don't make them wait generations.
