Whenever a significant honors show draws close, there’s always an outcry to include of new categories to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and fill the passions of fans who have specialized interests.
My colleague previously argued supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. So would strategy board titles, representing a passionate advocate's mission. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front since similar to single-minded supporters, there's a strong justification for why my demand is the most urgent above others. This is the request: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and it will always start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason film award organizations avoid this approach. Yet it remains an essential concession for the industry of gaming, showing incredible range they hardly constitute a single creative category.
For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
Leading game ceremonies presently include classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these award types successfully include numerous genres, making space possible for most games within them.
Not so for puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Think about these recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: building puzzles of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Which classification works between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur outstanding logic titles released every year without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- One classic puzzle game received no recognition completely in 2014
- A different innovative game missed out that year
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment that year
- Only a few brain-teasers scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're modest productions, yet the craft of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games stand as the most-played games worldwide maintaining this status for an extended period.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges well-known building titles competing to become best-selling game of all time; it also contends as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, while interacting with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Puzzle games wouldn’t have such difficulty. One could readily select a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these represent titles that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers function at the demanding boundary of video game design, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
