Each time a significant honors show approaches, one notices an outcry for introducing of new categories to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and satisfy the passions of fans who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer made the case for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. So would board games, which is someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification supporting my request stands as crucial and significant. This is the request: We need an award type for logic-based games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of video games, which are so diverse they barely qualify a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards presently include award types recognizing Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Consider three of outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles in a particular game, intense tile-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers published annually without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely in 2014
- A different innovative game was excluded in 2019
- A beloved organization game was overlooked recently
- Only a few brain-teasers barely qualified for niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, but the art in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Well-known matching games count as the most-played games globally maintaining this status for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game rivals popular creative games competing to become best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. It would be easy to populate five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these are games lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Logic title developers are working at the demanding boundary of video game design, producing among the purest expressions of gaming itself. Just like film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
