As any major awards ceremony nears, there’s always an outcry to include of new categories to recognize overlooked contributions and fill the hearts of enthusiasts dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague made the case supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. So would tabletop games, which is someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize because like all blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal is the most urgent and important of all. Here's the proposal: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and typically start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that cinema institutions don’t do it. Yet it remains a necessary evil for the industry of video games, showing incredible range they barely qualify a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these award types successfully include a lot of ground, and you can find room for most games within them.
Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to put them. Consider three of this year’s best games, each quite distinct: structural challenges in a particular game, intense tile-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly that have no home in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated in any category in 2014
- Another creative title received no nominations in 2019
- A beloved organization game got ignored recently
- Only a few puzzle games scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent compact experiences, however the design behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most popular titles in the world continuing this trend for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience rivals famous sandbox experiences competing to become most purchased experience; it also contends for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. It would be easy to populate five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators are working at the hard edge of video game design, producing among most fundamental forms of the video game form. Comparable to movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait generations.
