Each time a major prize-giving event draws close, you'll find a demand for introducing fresh award types to honor overlooked contributions and satisfy the passions of fans who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer has already made for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, this being a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case supporting my request is the most urgent above others. Here's the proposal: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and inevitably spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies don’t do it. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise for the industry of interactive entertainment, showing incredible range they barely qualify one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these classifications effectively encompass a lot of ground, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, all very different: structural challenges of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. What category would fit them between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly without proper recognition in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely during that awards season
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment recently
- Just some logic titles managed to sneak into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're modest productions, yet the craft in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for many years.
The famous puzzle experience rivals famous sandbox experiences claiming status as best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. One could readily select multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these include experiences that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers function at the challenging frontier of video game design, creating some of the purest expressions of gaming itself. Just like cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. Don't make them wait decades.
