Each time a significant awards ceremony draws close, one notices a demand for the addition additional classifications to honor overlooked contributions and delight the passions of fans dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague previously argued advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. So would strategy board titles, representing a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case for why my demand remains most pressing and significant. Here's the proposal: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and it will always generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason movie academies don’t do it. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise for the industry of gaming, that demonstrate such variety it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events currently feature award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these award types actually cover a lot of ground, and you can find room for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: building puzzles from a specific release, intense tile-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games published annually that have no home in entertainment awards, 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 completely in 2014
- A different innovative game received no nominations during that ceremony
- Popular arranging title was overlooked recently
- Just some brain-teasers barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, however the design behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among most engaged experiences in the world continuing this trend for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game competes with famous sandbox experiences for the title of best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and engaging across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. You could fill a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, since numerous excellent many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators operate at the hard edge of video game design, producing among essential manifestations of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
