As any significant awards ceremony draws close, you'll find a clamor to include of new categories to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the hearts of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
My colleague made the case supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are tabletop games, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal remains most pressing above others. This is the request: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre defies precise measurement; it’s very subjective, and inevitably generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why film award organizations avoid this approach. But it is an essential concession in the world of gaming, which are so diverse they barely qualify one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these six categories effectively encompass numerous genres, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, each quite distinct: structural challenges from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges in another game. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers released every year without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything that year
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment in 2021
- Just some logic titles barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often small games, yet the craft in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most engaged experiences worldwide continuing this trend for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with well-known building titles for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face that issue. One could readily select five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these include experiences without proper classification in important events. Brain-teaser creators function at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Just like film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
