Whenever a prominent honors show nears, you'll find an outcry for the addition fresh award types to recognize unsung work and delight the hearts of fans dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. So would strategy board titles, this being a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal stands as crucial above others. This is the request: We need a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason film award organizations avoid this approach. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise in the world of gaming, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards offer these award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these six categories actually cover many game types, and you can find room for most games within them.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles in a particular game, intense tile-matching of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges from additional release. Where could they possibly go among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens outstanding logic titles launched regularly without proper recognition in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition in any category that year
- A different innovative game received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked recently
- Limited numbers of brain-teasers managed to sneak into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent modest productions, however the design in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most popular titles worldwide continuing this trend for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals popular creative games competing to become most purchased experience; it also contends for top gaming experience. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and engaging across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have such difficulty. It would be easy to populate five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, since numerous excellent many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these represent titles that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers function at the hard edge of video game design, creating some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay decades.
