As any major honors show draws close, you'll find an outcry for the addition of new categories to acknowledge unsung work and delight the spirits of followers with niche passions.
My colleague has already made for a horror game category. That would rule. Equally deserving are board games, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward just as with other blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal stands as crucial above others. This is the request: There should be an award type for logic-based games.
Categorizing Game Types
Classifying creative works isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why movie academies avoid this approach. Yet it remains a necessary evil within the realm of video games, showing incredible range they hardly constitute as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include classifications covering Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these award types effectively encompass a lot of ground, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Think about these recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. Which classification works among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games released every year lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.
- One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated for anything that year
- A different innovative game received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
- Only a few brain-teasers scraped into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, however the design of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most engaged experiences globally and have been for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience rivals famous sandbox experiences for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.
The Solution and Justification
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. You could fill five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these represent titles without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers operate at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
