Each time a prominent awards ceremony draws close, you'll find an outcry for the addition of new categories to recognize underappreciated efforts and satisfy the spirits of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
My colleague made the case supporting a scary games classification. That would rule. Equally deserving are board games, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal remains most pressing above others. The demand is this: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why movie academies don’t do it. Yet it remains an essential concession for the industry of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute a single creative category.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards currently feature classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears to put them. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, each quite distinct: building puzzles of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges in another game. Which classification works between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers released every year that have no home in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- One classic puzzle game got overlooked for anything that year
- Another creative title missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored that year
- Limited numbers of logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, but the art in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games stand as most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for many years.
The famous puzzle experience competes with popular creative games for the title of highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and engaging with almost every other genre.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. One could readily select multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these are games lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers operate at the demanding boundary game development, creating some of essential manifestations of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay decades.
