As any major awards ceremony draws close, you'll find an outcry for the addition of new categories to honor overlooked contributions and fill the hearts of fans with niche passions.
My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would rule. The same goes for strategy board titles, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification supporting my request is the most urgent and important of all. Here's the proposal: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and typically generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. But it is a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies offer these classifications covering Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these six categories actually cover numerous genres, making space possible for most games within them.
Not so for puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: structural challenges in a particular game, intense tile-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Which classification works between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers launched regularly without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive Indie races.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked completely that year
- Another creative title received no nominations that year
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
- Limited numbers of puzzle games barely qualified for independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're small games, however the design behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games stand as most engaged experiences in the world continuing this trend for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game rivals popular creative games claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, while interacting with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have such difficulty. It would be easy to populate five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles annually without trouble — actually, with challenge, since numerous excellent numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers function at the demanding boundary interactive creation, developing some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait decades.
