Each time a prominent awards ceremony nears, you'll find a clamor to include of new categories to recognize overlooked contributions and satisfy the hearts of fans with niche passions.
Another commentator previously argued for a horror game category. It would be amazing. The same goes for strategy board titles, which is someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: We need an award type for logic-based games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and it will always spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an essential concession within the realm of video games, showing incredible range they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards offer these genre categories for Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories actually cover many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: the architectural riddles from a specific release, intense tile-matching in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. What category would fit them within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers released every year lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- One classic puzzle game received no recognition completely that year
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
- Just some logic titles managed to sneak into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often modest productions, however the design behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as the most-played games in the world continuing this trend for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games for the title of most purchased experience; it also contends for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. You could fill multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — actually, with challenge, since numerous excellent numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators operate at the challenging frontier of video game design, producing among the purest expressions of the video game form. Comparable to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
