Each time a prominent awards ceremony nears, one notices a demand to include additional classifications to honor unsung work and satisfy the spirits of enthusiasts dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would rule. Equally deserving are board games, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request is the most urgent and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that film award organizations avoid this approach. But it is a necessary evil in the world of interactive entertainment, 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 have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies offer these genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these award types effectively encompass numerous genres, making space possible for numerous titles.
Not so for puzzle games. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Consider three of this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles from a specific release, intense tile-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. Which classification works among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens outstanding logic titles published annually without proper recognition in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated for anything during that awards season
- Another creative title missed out in 2019
- A beloved organization game got ignored that year
- Just some brain-teasers barely qualified for independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent compact experiences, yet the craft behind logic titles is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges famous sandbox experiences for the title of best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes for top gaming experience. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, while interacting with diverse game types.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. You could fill multiple candidates 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 are games that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers are working at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of the purest expressions of gaming itself. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait generations.
