Each time a significant honors show approaches, you'll find a clamor for introducing additional classifications to acknowledge overlooked contributions and delight the hearts of followers who have specialized interests.
Another commentator has already made for a horror game category. That would rule. So would strategy board titles, this being someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request is the most urgent and significant. The demand is this: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why movie academies steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise within the realm of video games, which are so diverse they hardly constitute as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
Leading game ceremonies currently feature genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these six categories effectively encompass numerous genres, making space possible for most games within them.
Not so for puzzle games. No appropriate category exists to put them. Think about these this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges in a particular game, intense tile-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers released every year lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated completely in 2014
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Only a few logic titles scraped into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent compact experiences, but the art behind logic titles is of massive significance. Well-known matching games rank among most popular titles globally maintaining this status for over a decade.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges famous sandbox experiences for the title of most purchased experience; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, while interacting across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. One could readily select five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these are games lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Logic title developers operate at the demanding boundary game development, developing some of essential manifestations within interactive entertainment. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.