As any significant honors show approaches, there’s always a demand for introducing fresh award types to acknowledge overlooked contributions and satisfy the spirits of fans who have specialized interests.
My colleague made the case for a horror game category. That would rule. The same goes for tabletop games, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward just as with other single-minded supporters, there's a strong justification backing this proposal stands as crucial and significant. The demand is this: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why film award organizations avoid this approach. However, it represents a necessary evil in the world of interactive entertainment, showing incredible range they hardly constitute a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards offer these classifications covering Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories actually cover numerous genres, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Consider three of this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. Which classification works between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Acknowledgment Issues
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers released every year lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked in any category during that awards season
- Another imaginative release was excluded in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
- Only a few brain-teasers managed to sneak into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often modest productions, but the art of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games stand as most popular titles worldwide and have been for many years.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges well-known building titles for the title of most purchased experience; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, while interacting with almost every other genre.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. It would be easy to populate a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these are games lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators operate at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay generations.
