As any prominent awards ceremony nears, you'll find an outcry for introducing fresh award types to acknowledge overlooked contributions and delight the hearts of followers dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague has already made for a horror game category. It would be amazing. So would tabletop games, representing a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize because like all dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification supporting my request remains most pressing and significant. This is the request: There should be a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and typically start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that movie academies steer clear of genre categories. But it is a necessary evil within the realm of video games, showing incredible range they hardly constitute a single creative category.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards currently feature award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories effectively encompass a lot of ground, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears to put them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: the architectural riddles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers released every year that have no home in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything that year
- A different innovative game was excluded during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored in 2021
- Just some brain-teasers scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, but the art of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as the most-played games in the world and have been for an extended period.
The famous puzzle experience rivals famous sandbox experiences competing to become highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and engaging across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, since numerous excellent so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these represent titles that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers are working at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Just like film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
