As any significant awards ceremony draws close, one notices an outcry for introducing of new categories to honor unsung work and fill the hearts of fans dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. The same goes for strategy board titles, this being someone's personal cause. However, I must insist for pushing forward since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case supporting my request remains most pressing and significant. This is the request: We need an award type for logic-based games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and typically generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason cinema institutions don’t do it. However, it represents a necessary evil in the world of gaming, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies offer these genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these classifications successfully include many game types, and you can find room for numerous titles.
Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to put them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Which classification works among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers launched regularly that have no home at major award shows, if they accidentally match award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated for anything in 2014
- A different innovative game missed out during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game got ignored recently
- Limited numbers of logic titles barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent compact experiences, but the art behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games count as most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for an extended period.
The famous puzzle experience rivals famous sandbox experiences for the title of highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. It would be easy to populate five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these represent titles without proper classification in important events. Brain-teaser creators function at the challenging frontier of video game design, developing some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay generations.
