🔗 Share this article

As any significant honors show draws close, you'll find an outcry to include fresh award types to recognize unsung work and satisfy the hearts of fans dedicated to specific genres.

Another commentator has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are tabletop games, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. However, I must insist for pushing forward because like all blinkered fanatics, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal remains most pressing and significant. The demand is this: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.

Categorizing Game Types

Classifying creative works is not a science; it remains highly personal, and inevitably start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that movie academies steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains a necessary evil for the industry of video games, showing incredible range they barely qualify as a single art form.

For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, specific award classifications remain vital.

Present Award Structure

Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these classifications successfully include many game types, and you can find room for numerous titles.

This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Consider three of this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.

Acknowledgment Issues

Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers published annually that have no home in entertainment awards, if they accidentally match classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive Indie races.

• A renowned logic title received no recognition completely in 2014
• A different innovative game was excluded in 2019
• Popular arranging title received no acknowledgment recently
• Limited numbers of brain-teasers scraped into small studio or handheld classifications

Value of Brain-Teasers

Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most popular titles globally continuing this trend for many years.

The iconic tile-matching title competes with famous sandbox experiences for the title of highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and engaging with almost every other genre.

Recommendation and Reasoning

Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. One could readily select five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.

Restating the point, these are games that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers function at the hard edge of video game design, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay decades.