As any significant prize-giving event nears, you'll find a clamor for introducing fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and fill the spirits of enthusiasts dedicated to specific genres.
A fellow writer previously argued for a horror game category. It would be amazing. The same goes for strategy board titles, representing someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize because like all single-minded supporters, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal stands as crucial and important of all. Here's the proposal: There should be a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why movie academies don’t do it. Yet it remains an essential concession within the realm of video games, showing incredible range they barely qualify as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards presently include award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories successfully include numerous genres, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for puzzle games. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Consider three of this year’s best games, each quite distinct: structural challenges from a specific release, intense tile-matching in a different title, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Which classification works between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
Acknowledgment Issues
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers launched regularly that have no home during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated completely that year
- Another imaginative release received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked recently
- Only a few brain-teasers barely qualified for niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often small games, but the art behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most engaged experiences in the world continuing this trend for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges famous sandbox experiences claiming status as most purchased experience; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — actually, with challenge, since numerous excellent so many good games out.
Restating the point, these represent titles without proper classification in important events. Logic title developers are working at the challenging frontier of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations of gaming itself. Comparable to movie stunt professionals, they warrant appreciation. Don't make them wait 35 years.
