Each time a significant prize-giving event nears, you'll find a clamor for the addition fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and delight the spirits of fans with niche passions.
My colleague has already made for a horror game category. It would be amazing. The same goes for strategy board titles, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case supporting my request is the most urgent and significant. This is the request: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and it will always generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that movie academies don’t do it. Yet it remains a necessary evil in the world of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include genre categories for Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these classifications actually cover numerous genres, and you can find room for most games within them.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Think about these outstanding current releases, all very different: building puzzles from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers published annually that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition for anything that year
- Another imaginative release was excluded that year
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked recently
- Just some puzzle games barely qualified for independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often modest productions, yet the craft behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games stand as the most-played games in the world and have been for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with well-known building titles claiming status as most purchased experience; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. It would be easy to populate a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators function at the demanding boundary game development, developing some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
