As any major awards ceremony nears, one notices a clamor for introducing fresh award types to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and delight the passions of fans with niche passions.
My colleague previously argued supporting a scary games classification. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are board games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal stands as crucial and significant. Here's the proposal: We need an award type for logic-based games.
Categorizing Game Types
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and typically start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that cinema institutions avoid this approach. However, it represents an essential concession in the world of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards currently feature genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these classifications actually cover numerous genres, and you can find room for numerous titles.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
There are dozens outstanding logic titles released every year that have no home at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked for anything during that awards season
- Another imaginative release missed out during that ceremony
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
- Limited numbers of puzzle games managed to sneak into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent compact experiences, yet the craft of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as the most-played games globally and have been for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience competes with popular creative games claiming status as most purchased experience; it additionally competes for top gaming experience. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and engaging across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. One could readily select multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, since numerous excellent many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers operate at the challenging frontier of video game design, developing some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
