Each time a prominent awards ceremony nears, you'll find a clamor for the addition fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and fill the spirits of enthusiasts with niche passions.
Another commentator made the case for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. So would tabletop games, this being someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize since similar to blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal remains most pressing and important of all. Here's the proposal: We need an award type for logic-based games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Classifying creative works is not a science; it’s very subjective, and inevitably start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains a necessary evil within the realm of gaming, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these six categories successfully include numerous genres, making space possible accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Think about these outstanding current releases, all very different: building puzzles from a specific release, intense tile-matching in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers published annually lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely in 2014
- Another creative title was excluded during that ceremony
- Popular arranging title got ignored that year
- Only a few logic titles scraped into niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're small games, however the design behind logic titles is of massive significance. Well-known matching games count as the most-played games in the world continuing this trend for many years.
The famous puzzle experience competes with well-known building titles claiming status as most purchased experience; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. It would be easy to populate five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these include experiences without proper classification at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers operate at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Just like film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.
