Each time a significant prize-giving event draws close, one notices a clamor to include additional classifications to honor overlooked contributions and delight the passions of fans with niche passions.
My colleague previously argued for a horror game category. That would rule. So would tabletop games, representing someone's personal cause. However, I must insist if I try to elbow in front because like all blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case for why my demand stands as crucial and important of all. This is the request: We need a category for puzzle games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that movie academies don’t do it. But it is an essential concession in the world of gaming, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards currently feature genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these award types actually cover many game types, allowing placement for numerous titles.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears to put them. Think about these recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges of one title, intense tile-matching in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games published annually that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked for anything during that awards season
- A different innovative game was excluded in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored in 2021
- Only a few puzzle games scraped into independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
Frequently they represent small games, but the art of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games rank among the most-played games globally and have been for many years.
The legendary block-stacking game challenges popular creative games 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.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. One could readily select a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.
And to reiterate, these represent titles that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Puzzle game makers are working at the hard edge interactive creation, creating some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait generations.
