Whenever a major prize-giving event approaches, you'll find an outcry for the addition fresh award types to recognize underappreciated efforts and fill the spirits of fans with niche passions.
My colleague previously argued for a horror game category. It would be amazing. The same goes for tabletop games, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward because like all single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand remains most pressing and important of all. This is the request: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it’s very subjective, and it will always spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an essential concession within the realm of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards presently include classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these award types actually cover a lot of ground, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Think about these recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching in a different title, engaging interpersonal challenges in another game. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens outstanding logic titles published annually that have no home in entertainment awards, if they accidentally match for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- One classic puzzle game received no recognition for anything that year
- Another creative title missed out in 2019
- Popular arranging title received no acknowledgment in 2021
- Just some puzzle games scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often modest productions, however the design in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles rank among the most-played games in the world maintaining this status for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals popular creative games competing to become best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. One could readily select five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories in important events. Brain-teaser creators function at the challenging frontier of video game design, creating some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
