As any significant prize-giving event nears, you'll find a demand to include fresh award types to acknowledge overlooked contributions and satisfy the spirits of fans who have specialized interests.
My colleague previously argued supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. The same goes for strategy board titles, this being someone's personal cause. However, I must insist for pushing forward because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request stands as crucial above others. This is the request: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and inevitably generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that cinema institutions don’t do it. But it is an unavoidable compromise within the realm of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards currently feature award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories successfully include many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Consider three of this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Which classification works within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
Acknowledgment Issues
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games released every year that have no home during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked for anything in 2014
- Another creative title received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment recently
- Only a few puzzle games barely qualified for niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're small games, but the art of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles rank among the most-played games in the world maintaining this status for many years.
The famous puzzle experience challenges famous sandbox experiences competing to become highest-selling title ever; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. One could readily select a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these represent titles without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge of video game design, producing among essential manifestations of the video game form. Comparable to film action specialists, they warrant appreciation. Don't make them wait 35 years.
