Each time a prominent honors show draws close, you'll find a clamor to include fresh award types to honor overlooked contributions and satisfy the spirits of fans with niche passions.
Another commentator made the case for a horror game category. That would rule. 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 dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal stands as crucial and significant. The demand is this: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it’s very subjective, and typically start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise for the industry of gaming, which are so diverse they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these award types effectively encompass many game types, allowing placement for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: structural challenges in a particular game, intense tile-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Where could they possibly go among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.
Acknowledgment Issues
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers published annually lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated in any category in 2014
- Another imaginative release was excluded that year
- Popular arranging title got ignored that year
- Limited numbers of brain-teasers managed to sneak into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're compact experiences, but the art of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most engaged experiences worldwide continuing this trend for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals famous sandbox experiences competing to become best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and engaging across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. One could readily select multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these represent titles without proper classification in important events. Brain-teaser creators function at the hard edge of video game design, producing among the purest expressions within interactive entertainment. Just like cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
