As any significant honors show nears, there’s always an outcry to include additional classifications to acknowledge unsung work and fill the hearts of enthusiasts dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague made the case supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. The same goes for tabletop games, which is a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front since similar to blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request is the most urgent and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Classifying creative works isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and it will always generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. But it is an essential concession for the industry of gaming, showing incredible range they barely qualify one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events currently feature classifications covering Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these award types successfully include numerous genres, allowing placement for numerous titles.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to put them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Where could they possibly go among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers launched regularly without proper recognition in entertainment awards, if they accidentally match award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything in 2014
- A different innovative game was excluded during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game was overlooked in 2021
- Limited numbers of logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as the most-played games in the world maintaining this status for many years.
The famous puzzle experience challenges popular creative games competing to become best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, while interacting across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. You could fill five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
Restating the point, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories in important events. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of the purest expressions of gaming itself. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
