Whenever a significant prize-giving event draws close, you'll find a demand to include fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the passions of followers dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. So would board games, representing someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification for why my demand stands as crucial and significant. Here's the proposal: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. But it is an essential concession in the world of video games, which are so diverse they hardly constitute as a single art form.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to be recognized, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
The major gaming awards offer these genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these classifications actually cover many game types, making space possible for most games within them.
Different situation exists for puzzle games. 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, intense tile-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers published annually without proper recognition during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- One classic puzzle game got overlooked completely in 2014
- Another imaginative release was excluded during that ceremony
- Popular arranging title received no acknowledgment in 2021
- Only a few puzzle games managed to sneak into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent compact experiences, however the design of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as the most-played games in the world continuing this trend for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience rivals famous sandbox experiences for the title of highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter that issue. One could readily select a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these include experiences that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers function at the challenging frontier game development, developing some of essential manifestations of the video game form. Just like film action specialists, they warrant appreciation. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.
