Each time a prominent awards ceremony draws close, you'll find an outcry for introducing of new categories to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the passions of fans with niche passions.
Another commentator made the case supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are board games, representing a dedicated supporter's campaign. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front just as with other single-minded supporters, there's a strong justification for why my demand stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason cinema institutions avoid this approach. Yet it remains an essential concession within the realm of video games, showing incredible range they barely qualify one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
Prominent interactive entertainment events currently feature genre categories for Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these award types actually cover numerous genres, making space possible for most games within them.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Think about these outstanding current releases, all very different: structural challenges of one title, intense tile-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers released every year lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked in any category during that awards season
- Another imaginative release was excluded that year
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Only a few brain-teasers managed to sneak into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often modest productions, yet the craft of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges popular creative games competing to become best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, while interacting across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. You could fill a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these include experiences without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Just like cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. Don't make them wait 35 years.
