Whenever a prominent awards ceremony nears, you'll find a demand for introducing fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and delight the hearts of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
My colleague previously argued for a horror game category. That would rule. Equally deserving are tabletop games, representing 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 for why my demand stands as crucial above others. Here's the proposal: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and typically spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains an essential concession for the industry of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories successfully include numerous genres, and you can find room for numerous titles.
Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles of one title, intense tile-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. What category would fit them between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
Acknowledgment Issues
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games published annually lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition for anything during that awards season
- Another imaginative release received no nominations during that ceremony
- Popular arranging title got ignored recently
- Limited numbers of brain-teasers barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent modest productions, however the design in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games stand as the most-played games worldwide and have been for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games claiming status as best-selling game of all time; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, while interacting with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. You could fill multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent so many good games out.
Restating the point, these are games without proper classification at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers operate at the challenging frontier of video game design, producing among essential manifestations of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
