Each time a prominent awards ceremony draws close, there’s always a clamor for introducing additional classifications to honor unsung work and fill the spirits of followers who have specialized interests.
My colleague made the case for a horror game category. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, which is someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing and important of all. The demand is this: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Classifying creative works is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. But it is an unavoidable compromise within the realm of video games, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards presently include award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these award types effectively encompass a lot of ground, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, all very different: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. What category would fit them between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers launched regularly lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition in any category during that awards season
- A different innovative game received no nominations during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Just some puzzle games scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're modest productions, but the art behind logic titles is of massive significance. Well-known matching games rank among most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges famous sandbox experiences competing to become most purchased experience; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and engaging across multiple categories.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, since numerous excellent numerous deserving experiences.
Restating the point, these represent titles without proper classification in important events. Puzzle game makers operate at the demanding boundary interactive creation, creating some of essential manifestations within interactive entertainment. Just like cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
