Each time a significant awards ceremony approaches, you'll find an outcry for the addition additional classifications to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and delight the hearts of enthusiasts with niche passions.
Another commentator has already made for a horror game category. That would rule. The same goes for board games, representing a dedicated supporter's campaign. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand is the most urgent above others. Here's the proposal: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and it will always start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents a necessary evil for the industry of gaming, which are so diverse they barely qualify a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards offer these award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these award types actually cover numerous genres, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, all very different: structural challenges from a specific release, intense tile-matching from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. What category would fit them among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games published annually lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated for anything that year
- A different innovative game received no nominations that year
- A beloved organization game got ignored in 2021
- Just some logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often modest productions, yet the craft behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as most engaged experiences globally maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges popular creative games claiming status as best-selling game of all time; it also contends for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, and engaging across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. It would be easy to populate a field of five interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
Restating the point, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers function at the demanding boundary game development, developing some of the purest expressions within interactive entertainment. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
