As any significant honors show nears, one notices an outcry for introducing fresh award types to honor overlooked contributions and satisfy the passions of followers who have specialized interests.
My colleague has already made for a horror game category. It would be amazing. 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 because like all blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case for why my demand stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and inevitably generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why movie academies don’t do it. But it is an essential concession for the industry of video games, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to put them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles in a particular game, intense tile-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Which classification works within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist outstanding logic titles released every year that have no home at major award shows, if they accidentally match classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything during that awards season
- Another creative title was excluded during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment in 2021
- Just some brain-teasers barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're modest productions, but the art of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among most popular titles in the world maintaining this status for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with famous sandbox experiences claiming status as most purchased experience; it also contends for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter that issue. You could fill a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these include experiences that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers are working at the hard edge of video game design, producing among most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Comparable to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay decades.
