As any significant awards ceremony approaches, there’s always an outcry to include additional classifications to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the spirits of enthusiasts with niche passions.
A fellow writer has already made for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. So would strategy board titles, which is someone's personal cause. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal remains most pressing above others. Here's the proposal: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why film award organizations avoid this approach. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise within the realm of video games, showing incredible range they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards presently include award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these classifications effectively encompass a lot of ground, and you can find room for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Think about these this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching in a different title, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles released every year without proper recognition at major award shows, if they accidentally match classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated in any category in 2014
- Another creative title received no nominations during that ceremony
- Popular arranging title was overlooked that year
- Only a few puzzle games managed to sneak into independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent small games, however the design of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games count as most popular titles globally continuing this trend for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals famous sandbox experiences for the title of best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home in important events. Brain-teaser creators operate at the challenging frontier interactive creation, creating some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. Don't make them wait 35 years.
