Whenever a prominent awards ceremony draws close, you'll find a demand for the addition of new categories to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and fill the passions of followers dedicated to specific genres.
A fellow writer made the case supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front just as with other dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification for why my demand stands as crucial and significant. This is the request: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works is not a science; it’s very subjective, and typically spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why cinema institutions don’t do it. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise in the world of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events currently feature classifications covering Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories actually cover many game types, making space possible accommodating various experiences.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: building puzzles from a specific release, intense tile-matching of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges from additional release. Which classification works among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers published annually without proper recognition at major award shows, if they accidentally match for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything that year
- Another imaginative release received no nominations that year
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment in 2021
- Limited numbers of logic titles scraped into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games rank among most popular titles in the world and have been for many years.
The legendary block-stacking game rivals popular creative games competing to become highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, while interacting with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. You could fill five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these are games that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge interactive creation, producing among essential manifestations of the video game form. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
