As any significant honors show draws close, you'll find a demand to include additional classifications to honor underappreciated efforts and delight the spirits of followers with niche passions.
Another commentator made the case for a horror game category. That would rule. The same goes for board games, representing someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request remains most pressing and important of all. The demand is this: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. There’s a reason film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an essential concession within the realm of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they barely qualify as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, and for games of all stripes to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
Leading game ceremonies currently feature genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories successfully include many game types, and you can find room for most games within them.
This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Think about these outstanding current releases, all very different: building puzzles in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games published annually lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated in any category in 2014
- Another creative title missed out in 2019
- A beloved organization game was overlooked recently
- Just some puzzle games scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're modest productions, yet the craft behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as most popular titles globally and have been for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience competes with popular creative games competing to become best-selling game of all time; it also contends 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 such difficulty. It would be easy to populate a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these represent titles that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators function at the demanding boundary interactive creation, producing among most fundamental forms of the video game form. Comparable to movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait 35 years.
