As any significant honors show approaches, you'll find a demand to include fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the passions of fans with niche passions.
My colleague made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. So would board games, representing a dedicated supporter's campaign. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front since similar to blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand stands as crucial above others. The demand is this: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why movie academies avoid this approach. But it is an unavoidable compromise in the world of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards offer these genre categories for Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these classifications successfully include a lot of ground, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games released every year lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything in 2014
- Another creative title received no nominations that year
- A beloved organization game got ignored that year
- Just some logic titles barely qualified for niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're compact experiences, but the art of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles count as the most-played games globally and have been for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience competes with well-known building titles claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have such difficulty. One could readily select multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories in important events. Logic title developers are working at the hard edge of video game design, creating some of essential manifestations within interactive entertainment. Just like cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay generations.
