Whenever a major prize-giving event draws close, one notices a demand to include additional classifications to honor overlooked contributions and fill the passions of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer made the case supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are board games, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; it’s very subjective, and inevitably generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that film award organizations don’t do it. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise within the realm of video games, which are so diverse they hardly constitute as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
Leading game ceremonies offer these genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these award types successfully include numerous genres, making space possible for most games within them.
This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: building puzzles in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games published annually that have no home in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive Indie races.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition in any category during that awards season
- A different innovative game received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored that year
- Only a few puzzle games managed to sneak into small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're small games, however the design in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Well-known matching games stand as most engaged experiences in the world continuing this trend for many years.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges famous sandbox experiences for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, since numerous excellent so many good games out.
Restating the point, these represent titles that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators operate at the hard edge game development, creating some of the purest expressions of gaming itself. Just like cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait 35 years.
