As any major prize-giving event approaches, you'll find a clamor for the addition of new categories to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and delight the passions of followers who have specialized interests.
My colleague previously argued advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. Equally deserving are board games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist when I prioritize because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal remains most pressing and significant. This is the request: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and it will always generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to compete fairly, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these classifications covering Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories actually cover numerous genres, and you can find room for most games within them.
Not so for puzzle games. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Think about these recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
Acknowledgment Issues
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games published annually that have no home during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything in 2014
- A different innovative game missed out in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored in 2021
- Just some brain-teasers scraped into independent or mobile categories
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're small games, yet the craft in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most popular titles in the world and have been for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it also contends as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, and engaging across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. It would be easy to populate five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the challenging frontier game development, producing among the purest expressions of gaming itself. Just like movie stunt professionals, they warrant appreciation. Don't make them wait 35 years.
