As any significant prize-giving event draws close, one notices an outcry to include fresh award types to recognize overlooked contributions and satisfy the hearts of enthusiasts with niche passions.
My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. So would tabletop games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist when I prioritize since similar to single-minded supporters, there's a strong justification backing this proposal remains most pressing and significant. The demand is this: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason cinema institutions avoid this approach. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of gaming, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards presently include genre categories for Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications actually cover many game types, making space possible for most games within them.
Not so for puzzle games. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: structural challenges in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles published annually lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- One classic puzzle game got overlooked for anything during that awards season
- Another imaginative release received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored that year
- Limited numbers of brain-teasers barely qualified for niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often small games, however the design of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among most popular titles globally continuing this trend for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals well-known building titles for the title of best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. You could fill a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these include experiences without proper classification at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Just like film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
