As any prominent honors show approaches, you'll find a clamor to include additional classifications to recognize unsung work and fill the hearts of fans who have specialized interests.
Another commentator made the case for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. The same goes for board games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case supporting my request is the most urgent above others. This is the request: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that film award organizations don’t do it. Yet it remains a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards currently feature classifications covering Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these six categories successfully include numerous genres, and you can find room for most games within them.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Think about these recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Where could they possibly go among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers published annually that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked in any category during that awards season
- Another imaginative release was excluded that year
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment recently
- Only a few puzzle games barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games count as the most-played games globally continuing this trend for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals popular creative games claiming status as most purchased experience; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, while interacting across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. It would be easy to populate a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Logic title developers are working at the hard edge of video game design, creating some of the purest expressions within interactive entertainment. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
