As any significant awards ceremony approaches, you'll find an outcry for the addition of new categories to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and delight the spirits of followers with niche passions.
Another commentator made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are board games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal is the most urgent and significant. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and typically start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that movie academies don’t do it. But it is an unavoidable compromise in the world of video games, which are so diverse they hardly constitute a single creative category.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies offer these award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these award types successfully include a lot of ground, making space possible for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. Which classification works within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games released every year lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated completely in 2014
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
- Limited numbers of puzzle games managed to sneak into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often modest productions, but the art of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most popular titles worldwide and have been for an extended period.
The famous puzzle experience competes with popular creative games claiming status as most purchased experience; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. It would be easy to populate five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these represent titles without proper classification at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators operate at the hard edge of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations of gaming itself. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.