Each time a major awards ceremony approaches, you'll find an outcry for introducing of new categories to recognize underappreciated efforts and delight the hearts of fans with niche passions.
My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would rule. The same goes for tabletop games, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that film award organizations don’t do it. However, it represents a necessary evil in the world of gaming, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
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.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards presently include award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories successfully include a lot of ground, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Consider three of recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles of one title, intense tile-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, except when they manage to fit for categories like Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition in any category in 2014
- Another creative title received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored in 2021
- Only a few logic titles scraped into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent modest productions, but the art in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among most engaged experiences globally maintaining this status for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges popular creative games competing to become highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. It would be easy to populate five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these include experiences without proper classification in important events. Logic title developers function at the hard edge of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
