As any prominent awards ceremony draws close, one notices a clamor for introducing fresh award types to recognize overlooked contributions and satisfy the passions of enthusiasts with niche passions.
My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. So would tabletop games, this being someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance 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 important of all. Here's the proposal: We need a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; it’s very subjective, and inevitably spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason movie academies don’t do it. Yet it remains an essential concession for the industry of gaming, which are so diverse they barely qualify as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards offer these genre categories for Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, allowing placement for numerous titles.
Different situation exists for puzzle games. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: structural challenges of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist outstanding logic titles released every year without proper recognition in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit for categories like Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything that year
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
- Just some puzzle games scraped into independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often compact experiences, but the art behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games count as most popular titles in the world and have been for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals famous sandbox experiences competing to become most purchased experience; it also contends as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. It would be easy to populate a field of five interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these represent titles that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers are working at the challenging frontier of video game design, developing some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Comparable to movie stunt professionals, they warrant appreciation. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
