As any prominent honors show draws close, you'll find a clamor for the addition of new categories to recognize underappreciated efforts and fill the spirits of fans with niche passions.
My colleague 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. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification supporting my request remains most pressing and significant. The demand is this: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why film award organizations avoid this approach. Yet it remains an essential concession for the industry of interactive entertainment, showing incredible range they hardly constitute one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards offer these genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, making space possible for numerous titles.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Think about these this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers published annually lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- One classic puzzle game received no recognition completely during that awards season
- A different innovative game missed out in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
- Limited numbers of puzzle games scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often modest productions, yet the craft in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most popular titles in the world continuing this trend for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals well-known building titles for the title of most purchased experience; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, while interacting with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face that issue. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the demanding boundary interactive creation, developing some of the purest expressions of gaming itself. Just like cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait generations.