As any major prize-giving event draws close, you'll find a demand to include fresh award types to recognize unsung work and delight the passions of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
My colleague previously argued for a horror game category. That would rule. So would strategy board titles, representing a dedicated supporter's campaign. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request stands as crucial and significant. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre defies precise measurement; it’s very subjective, and inevitably generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that cinema institutions don’t do it. However, it represents a necessary evil within the realm of gaming, showing incredible range they barely qualify one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards currently feature classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these award types effectively encompass many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Consider three of outstanding current releases, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles in a particular game, intense tile-matching of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games released every year that have no home in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely during that awards season
- Another creative title missed out that year
- A beloved organization game got ignored in 2021
- Only a few puzzle games scraped into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often modest productions, but the art of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Well-known matching games stand as most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for many years.
The famous puzzle experience challenges famous sandbox experiences competing to become best-selling game of all time; it also contends for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and engaging across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. One could readily select multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, since numerous excellent numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these are games without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay decades.
