🔗 Share this article

Each time a major prize-giving event draws close, one notices a clamor to include additional classifications to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and satisfy the hearts of enthusiasts with niche passions.

My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are tabletop games, which is someone's personal cause. However, I must insist for pushing forward because like all single-minded supporters, I possess a compelling case for why my demand remains most pressing and significant. The demand is this: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.

Organizing Gaming Categories

Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and inevitably generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason film award organizations avoid this approach. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise for the industry of gaming, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute a single creative category.

For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.

Current Gaming Award Categories

Leading game ceremonies offer these genre categories for Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these classifications successfully include a lot of ground, making space possible for numerous titles.

Not so for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles of one title, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, engaging interpersonal challenges in another game. Where could they possibly go among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.

Recognition Challenges

Numerous examples exist outstanding logic titles released every year lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.

• One classic puzzle game received no recognition for anything during that awards season
• A different innovative game was excluded in 2019
• Popular arranging title was overlooked recently
• Only a few logic titles managed to sneak into niche award types

Significance of Puzzle Games

Frequently they represent compact experiences, but the art of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most popular titles in the world and have been for over a decade.

The famous puzzle experience rivals well-known building titles for the title of best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and engaging with almost every other genre.

Recommendation and Reasoning

Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. You could fill five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent numerous deserving experiences.

And to reiterate, these include experiences without proper classification at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the demanding boundary of video game design, producing among essential manifestations within interactive entertainment. Just like cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.