Each time a major prize-giving event approaches, you'll find an outcry for the addition of new categories to honor overlooked contributions and fill the hearts of enthusiasts dedicated to specific genres.
Another commentator made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. So would tabletop games, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward just as with other dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal stands as crucial and important of all. Here's the proposal: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and typically spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that cinema institutions don’t do it. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise for the industry of video games, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these six categories successfully include numerous genres, and you can find room for numerous titles.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to put them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, each quite distinct: structural challenges of one title, intense tile-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles released every year that have no home during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit for categories like Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated in any category during that awards season
- Another creative title received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment recently
- Only a few puzzle games scraped into independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent compact experiences, yet the craft of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles stand as most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals popular creative games claiming status as most purchased experience; it also contends for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. You could fill five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge interactive creation, producing among the purest expressions of the video game form. Just like cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait 35 years.
