Whenever a significant awards ceremony nears, you'll find an outcry for the addition fresh award types to recognize unsung work and satisfy the spirits of enthusiasts with niche passions.
A fellow writer has already made for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are tabletop games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist for pushing forward since similar to blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal stands as crucial and significant. This is the request: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works is not a science; it remains highly personal, and inevitably spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason film award organizations avoid this approach. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise for the industry of interactive entertainment, showing incredible range they barely qualify one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these classifications actually cover many game types, allowing placement for numerous titles.
Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: structural challenges from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers launched regularly without proper recognition at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition in any category during that awards season
- A different innovative game received no nominations during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored that year
- Only a few puzzle games managed to sneak into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, however the design in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Well-known matching games count as most popular titles globally and have been for many years.
The famous puzzle experience rivals famous sandbox experiences competing to become best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, while interacting with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. You could fill a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — actually, with challenge, since numerous excellent many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers operate at the demanding boundary of video game design, creating some of most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay decades.
