As any significant honors show approaches, one notices a clamor to include fresh award types to honor unsung work and delight the hearts of enthusiasts with niche passions.
Another commentator has already made supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, representing someone's personal cause. However, I must insist for pushing forward because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and inevitably spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that cinema institutions avoid this approach. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise in the world of video games, that demonstrate such variety it's challenging to consider them as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence 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 offer these award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, each quite distinct: structural challenges from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Which classification works between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games published annually lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- One classic puzzle game got overlooked in any category in 2014
- Another creative title missed out during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment recently
- Only a few puzzle games managed to sneak into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often compact experiences, however the design behind logic titles is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles stand as the most-played games in the world maintaining this status for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges famous sandbox experiences for the title of highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks within interactive entertainment, and engaging across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. You could fill five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
Restating the point, these are games without proper classification at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the challenging frontier of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
