As any significant awards ceremony approaches, you'll find a demand for introducing fresh award types to honor unsung work and delight the passions of fans who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. The same goes for tabletop games, representing a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request is the most urgent above others. The demand is this: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that movie academies avoid this approach. However, it represents an unavoidable compromise for the industry of video games, which are so diverse they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards presently include classifications covering Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these six categories actually cover many game types, and you can find room for numerous titles.
Different situation exists for puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: building puzzles of one title, intense tile-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. Which classification works among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games published annually without proper recognition at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- One classic puzzle game received no recognition in any category that year
- Another imaginative release was excluded during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game got ignored recently
- Only a few brain-teasers scraped into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often small games, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games stand as most engaged experiences in the world and have been for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with well-known building titles claiming status as best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these include experiences without proper classification at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators are working at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of essential manifestations of gaming itself. Just like film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait generations.
