As any prominent awards ceremony approaches, you'll find an outcry for introducing fresh award types to recognize underappreciated efforts and delight the passions of enthusiasts with niche passions.
My colleague made the case for a horror game category. That would rule. Equally deserving are board games, representing a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front since similar to blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request is the most urgent and significant. This is the request: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and typically spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason film award organizations steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute one unified medium.
For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards offer these classifications covering Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these award types effectively encompass numerous genres, making space possible for numerous titles.
Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Consider three of this year’s best games, each quite distinct: structural challenges of one title, intense tile-matching of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers launched regularly that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything in 2014
- Another imaginative release received no nominations during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game was overlooked in 2021
- Just some puzzle games barely qualified for niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games rank among most popular titles globally maintaining this status for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience challenges famous sandbox experiences for the title of best-selling game of all time; it also contends as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, and engaging with diverse game types.
The Solution and Justification
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. One could readily select a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers operate at the demanding boundary interactive creation, creating some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait generations.
