Each time a prominent prize-giving event draws close, you'll find a demand for the addition of new categories to acknowledge unsung work and fill the passions of enthusiasts dedicated to specific genres.
Another commentator has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. The same goes for board games, which is a passionate advocate's mission. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front just as with other dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal stands as crucial above others. The demand is this: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and typically generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why movie academies don’t do it. Yet it remains an essential concession for the industry of gaming, showing incredible range they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards currently feature award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these classifications effectively encompass a lot of ground, and you can find room for numerous titles.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games released every year without proper recognition at major award shows, if they accidentally match for categories like Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything that year
- Another imaginative release was excluded in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Only a few puzzle games scraped into independent or mobile categories
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, yet the craft behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among most engaged experiences in the world and have been for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals famous sandbox experiences competing to become most purchased experience; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, while interacting with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. You could fill multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these are games that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge game development, developing some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Just like film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait generations.
