As any major prize-giving event nears, you'll find a clamor for the addition of new categories to acknowledge overlooked contributions and satisfy the passions of fans with niche passions.
My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would rule. Equally deserving are tabletop games, this being someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward since similar to blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request stands as crucial above others. This is the request: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise within the realm of video games, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
Leading game ceremonies offer these award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these award types successfully include many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Think about these this year’s best games, each quite distinct: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Which classification works among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly that have no home at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition completely in 2014
- Another imaginative release received no nominations during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game got ignored that year
- Limited numbers of brain-teasers managed to sneak into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent compact experiences, but the art behind logic titles is of massive significance. Well-known matching games rank among most engaged experiences worldwide and have been for over a decade.
The legendary block-stacking game competes with popular creative games for the title of highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, while interacting with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. You could fill five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers are working at the challenging frontier of video game design, creating some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
