The Iconic Puzzle Game Couldn't Win at This Gaming Ceremony — An Additional Classification Might Solve This

Each time a prominent honors show approaches, there’s always an outcry to include of new categories to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and satisfy the passions of enthusiasts with niche passions.

My colleague has already made for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. The same goes for strategy board titles, which is a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front since similar to single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand is the most urgent and important of all. Here's the proposal: There should be a category for puzzle games.

Organizing Gaming Categories

Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why film award organizations don’t do it. But it is an unavoidable compromise in the world of video games, which are so diverse they barely qualify a single creative category.

For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.

Current Gaming Award Categories

Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these six categories actually cover many game types, and you can find room for most games within them.

Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. Which classification works between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.

Recognition Challenges

Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers released every year that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.

• A renowned logic title received no recognition in any category in 2014
• Another creative title was excluded in 2019
• Popular arranging title got ignored that year
• Limited numbers of puzzle games scraped into independent or mobile categories

Value of Brain-Teasers

Frequently they represent compact experiences, however the design in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles rank among most engaged experiences in the world continuing this trend for over a decade.

The iconic tile-matching title competes with well-known building titles for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.

The Solution and Justification

Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude so many good games out.

And to reiterate, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories in important events. Puzzle game makers operate at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Just like film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.