Whenever a major honors show draws close, there’s always a clamor for the addition fresh award types to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and delight the passions of fans with niche passions.
My colleague has already made for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are board games, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand remains most pressing and important of all. Here's the proposal: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and inevitably spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that movie academies steer clear of genre categories. However, it represents an essential concession in the world of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they hardly constitute a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events currently feature classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these award types actually cover numerous genres, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: structural challenges in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges from additional release. Which classification works between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
Acknowledgment Issues
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers launched regularly that have no home in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition completely that year
- A different innovative game was excluded that year
- Popular arranging title got ignored recently
- Just some brain-teasers managed to sneak into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often small games, yet the craft in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most engaged experiences worldwide and have been for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges popular creative games for the title of best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, while interacting across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these represent titles that otherwise have no home in important events. Brain-teaser creators are working at the challenging frontier game development, creating some of essential manifestations of gaming itself. Just like cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay 35 years.