As any major awards ceremony approaches, one notices a clamor for introducing fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and satisfy the hearts of followers with niche passions.
My colleague has already made for a horror game category. It would be amazing. The same goes for board games, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal remains most pressing above others. Here's the proposal: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why film award organizations don’t do it. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise within the realm of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events currently feature award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, making space possible for numerous titles.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles of one title, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. What category would fit them within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens outstanding logic titles published annually without proper recognition in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit for categories like Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked in any category in 2014
- A different innovative game missed out in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience was overlooked recently
- Only a few logic titles barely qualified for niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, however the design in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most popular titles in the world and have been for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with famous sandbox experiences claiming status as most purchased experience; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. It would be easy to populate five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these are games that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Comparable to movie stunt professionals, they warrant appreciation. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
