As any major honors show nears, you'll find an outcry for the addition fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and fill the spirits of fans who have specialized interests.
My colleague made the case for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are tabletop games, representing someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward since similar to blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request remains most pressing above others. Here's the proposal: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it’s very subjective, and it will always generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. Yet it remains a necessary evil in the world of gaming, showing incredible range they barely qualify one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards presently include classifications covering Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these classifications successfully include a lot of ground, making space possible for most games within them.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Think about these this year’s best games, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly that have no home during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated for anything in 2014
- Another imaginative release received no nominations that year
- Popular arranging title got ignored in 2021
- Limited numbers of puzzle games scraped into independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often modest productions, but the art of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals famous sandbox experiences for the title of highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks within interactive entertainment, while interacting across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. It would be easy to populate a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators operate at the challenging frontier game development, producing among most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Just like movie stunt professionals, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay decades.
