Tetris Wouldn't Triumph at The Game Awards — A New Category May Address This Issue
Each time a prominent prize-giving event approaches, one notices a demand to include of new categories to honor overlooked contributions and delight the hearts of fans with niche passions.
A fellow writer made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. The same goes for board games, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize because like all blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request stands as crucial and significant. The demand is this: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason film award organizations avoid this approach. But it is an essential concession within the realm of video games, that demonstrate such variety it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards currently feature genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these six categories effectively encompass a lot of ground, and you can find room for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to puzzle games. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Consider three of outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges from a specific release, intense tile-matching of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens outstanding logic titles published annually lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match for categories like Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely that year
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Only a few puzzle games scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often compact experiences, however the design of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as the most-played games globally maintaining this status for many years.
The famous puzzle experience competes with popular creative games claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and engaging with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. You could fill a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these are games that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge game development, creating some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay generations.