As any major awards ceremony nears, there’s always a clamor for introducing fresh award types to honor overlooked contributions and fill the passions of fans who have specialized interests.
My colleague previously argued for a horror game category. That would rule. The same goes for strategy board titles, this being someone's personal cause. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal is the most urgent and significant. This is the request: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it’s very subjective, and it will always spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why movie academies avoid this approach. But it is a necessary evil for the industry of video games, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include classifications covering Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these classifications effectively encompass a lot of ground, making space possible accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to put them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles released every year that have no home at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated in any category that year
- Another creative title was excluded in 2019
- Popular arranging title was overlooked that year
- Only a few logic titles managed to sneak into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're small games, yet the craft behind logic titles is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals well-known building titles competing to become best-selling game of all time; it also contends as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and engaging with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. You could fill multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories in important events. Brain-teaser creators are working at the hard edge of video game design, producing among essential manifestations of the video game form. Just like film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay generations.
