Whenever a significant honors show nears, you'll find a clamor to include fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and satisfy the passions of fans with niche passions.
A fellow writer made the case for a horror game category. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are board games, representing a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front just as with other dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand is the most urgent and significant. This is the request: We need a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why movie academies steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents a necessary evil within the realm of gaming, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories successfully include numerous genres, and you can find room for most games within them.
Not so for puzzle games. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Think about these recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: structural challenges in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. What category would fit them between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games released every year without proper recognition in entertainment awards, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked for anything that year
- Another creative title missed out during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment that year
- Just some brain-teasers scraped into independent or mobile categories
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent small games, yet the craft behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as the most-played games in the world and have been for an extended period.
The famous puzzle experience rivals famous sandbox experiences claiming status as best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have such difficulty. It would be easy to populate a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent so many good games out.
Restating the point, these are games without proper classification at major gaming awards. Logic title developers are working at the demanding boundary game development, producing among essential manifestations of gaming itself. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait decades.
