As any prominent honors show approaches, you'll find a demand for introducing fresh award types to honor unsung work and satisfy the hearts of followers dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague made the case for a horror game category. That would rule. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, which is someone's personal cause. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all single-minded supporters, there's a strong justification supporting my request stands as crucial and important of all. 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 inevitably generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise within the realm of gaming, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these six categories actually cover numerous genres, and you can find room for most games within them.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Think about these recent excellent titles, all very different: the architectural riddles from a specific release, intense tile-matching from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges from additional release. Which classification works within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games released every year without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated in any category during that awards season
- Another creative title missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment recently
- Only a few puzzle games barely qualified for independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often compact experiences, but the art in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as the most-played games globally maintaining this status for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with famous sandbox experiences competing to become best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. You could fill multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these are games that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge game development, creating some of the purest expressions of gaming itself. Just like cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
