Each time a prominent prize-giving event nears, you'll find an outcry for introducing of new categories to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and satisfy the hearts of fans with niche passions.
Another commentator made the case supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. The same goes for strategy board titles, this being a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal is the most urgent and important of all. This is the request: We need an award type for logic-based games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Classifying creative works isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason cinema institutions avoid this approach. But it is a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards offer these genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these six categories successfully include many game types, making space possible for most games within them.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Consider three of outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges in a particular game, intense tile-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games launched regularly lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked in any category during that awards season
- Another imaginative release received no nominations during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Limited numbers of logic titles managed to sneak into small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent small games, however the design behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games rank among most engaged experiences globally continuing this trend for many years.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges popular creative games for the title of best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face that issue. It would be easy to populate a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — actually, with challenge, since numerous excellent numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these include experiences that otherwise have no home in important events. Logic title developers function at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of essential manifestations within interactive entertainment. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
