Each time a significant awards ceremony draws close, one notices a clamor for introducing fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the spirits of followers with niche passions.
My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, which is a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal remains most pressing above others. This is the request: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it’s very subjective, and typically spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why movie academies steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of video games, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify a single creative category.
For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards currently feature genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these classifications actually cover a lot of ground, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, all very different: the architectural riddles of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, engaging interpersonal challenges from additional release. What category would fit them within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers released every year without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition for anything in 2014
- Another creative title was excluded during that ceremony
- Popular arranging title received no acknowledgment that year
- Just some puzzle games scraped into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent small games, but the art in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among the most-played games in the world and have been for many years.
The famous puzzle experience rivals well-known building titles competing to become most purchased experience; it also contends for top gaming experience. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter that issue. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these are games that otherwise have no home in important events. Brain-teaser creators operate at the challenging frontier of video game design, producing among the purest expressions of gaming itself. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay decades.
