Each time a major awards ceremony draws close, there’s always a demand for introducing fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the passions of fans dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague has already made for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. The same goes for strategy board titles, which is someone's personal cause. However, I must insist for pushing forward because like all blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request is the most urgent above others. This is the request: We need a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Classifying creative works is not a science; it remains highly personal, and inevitably generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that cinema institutions avoid this approach. Yet it remains a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of gaming accomplishments to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, allowing placement for most games within them.
Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Think about these outstanding current releases, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles from a specific release, intense tile-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Which classification works between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles published annually that have no home during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely in 2014
- A different innovative game received no nominations during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Limited numbers of logic titles managed to sneak into independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're small games, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as the most-played games in the world maintaining this status for many years.
The legendary block-stacking game competes with popular creative games for the title of most purchased experience; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, while interacting with diverse game types.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. One could readily select multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators function at the challenging frontier game development, creating some of most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Just like film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
