As any major awards ceremony nears, one notices an outcry to include additional classifications to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the spirits of followers dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague made the case supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. So would board games, which is a passionate advocate's mission. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward because like all blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request is the most urgent and important of all. Here's the proposal: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and it will always spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that movie academies avoid this approach. Yet it remains an essential concession within the realm of video games, which are so diverse they hardly constitute a single creative category.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
Leading game ceremonies presently include award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications successfully include many game types, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, each quite distinct: building puzzles in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers launched regularly that have no home during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition completely during that awards season
- Another creative title received no nominations during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment recently
- Only a few logic titles barely qualified for niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often modest productions, yet the craft of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most engaged experiences globally and have been for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games for the title of highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and engaging with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. It would be easy to populate five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories in important events. Puzzle game makers operate at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
