Whenever a major prize-giving event draws close, there’s always a clamor to include of new categories to recognize underappreciated efforts and satisfy the passions of followers dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. The same goes for board games, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize because like all single-minded supporters, there's a strong justification backing this proposal stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of gaming accomplishments to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these award types effectively encompass numerous genres, allowing placement for most games within them.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Think about these this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles in a particular game, intense tile-matching of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers launched regularly without proper recognition in entertainment awards, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition for anything during that awards season
- A different innovative game was excluded during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment recently
- Limited numbers of puzzle games barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent small games, but the art of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as most engaged experiences globally maintaining this status for an extended period.
The famous puzzle experience competes with popular creative games for the title of most purchased experience; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, while interacting across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. One could readily select a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
Restating the point, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators are working at the hard edge game development, producing among the purest expressions within interactive entertainment. Comparable to movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
