Whenever a significant honors show approaches, you'll find a demand to include fresh award types to recognize overlooked contributions and delight the spirits of enthusiasts with niche passions.
My colleague previously argued advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. So would 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 for why my demand remains most pressing and significant. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. There’s a reason cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards currently feature classifications covering Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories successfully include numerous genres, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Think about these this year’s best games, all very different: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. Where could they possibly go among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles launched regularly lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything that year
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- Popular arranging title got ignored that year
- Just some logic titles managed to sneak into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often small games, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games count as the most-played games worldwide and have been for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges popular creative games for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and engaging across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face that issue. It would be easy to populate a field of five interesting, varied, worthy titles annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these represent titles without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers function at the challenging frontier of video game design, creating some of most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay decades.
