Each time a major prize-giving event nears, you'll find a demand to include additional classifications to honor overlooked contributions and fill the hearts of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer made the case for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. The same goes for tabletop games, representing a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification for why my demand stands as crucial and important of all. Here's the proposal: We need a category for puzzle games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Classifying creative works isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that movie academies avoid this approach. But it is a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, showing incredible range they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.
Existing Game Classification System
Leading game ceremonies currently feature classifications covering Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications successfully include many game types, allowing placement for most games within them.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.
The Representation Problem
Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games released every year that have no home during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked for anything during that awards season
- Another imaginative release missed out in 2019
- A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment that year
- Limited numbers of brain-teasers scraped into niche award types
Significance of Puzzle Games
Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games count as most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience competes with famous sandbox experiences for the title of best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, while interacting with diverse game types.
The Solution and Justification
Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. You could fill multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.
Restating the point, these are games without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers operate at the challenging frontier of video game design, producing among most fundamental forms of the video game form. Comparable to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay decades.