As any major prize-giving event approaches, there’s always a demand for introducing fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and satisfy the spirits of followers dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague made the case supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, this being someone's personal cause. However, I must insist for pushing forward because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request is the most urgent above others. This is the request: We need a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and inevitably generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason cinema institutions avoid this approach. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise in the world of video games, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories effectively encompass numerous genres, and you can find room for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to put them. Consider three of this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles launched regularly without proper recognition in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated completely during that awards season
- A different innovative game received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment recently
- Only a few brain-teasers scraped into independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often small games, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games count as most engaged experiences worldwide and have been for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games for the title of most purchased experience; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. You could fill a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these represent titles that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators are working at the hard edge of video game design, producing among the purest expressions within interactive entertainment. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
