As any significant honors show draws close, you'll find a clamor to include fresh award types to honor overlooked contributions and delight the spirits of enthusiasts dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague previously argued advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. So would strategy board titles, which is a passionate advocate's mission. But they will have to forgive me when I prioritize because like all single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request stands as crucial above others. This is the request: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it’s very subjective, and typically start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason cinema institutions don’t do it. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise for the industry of video games, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Leading game ceremonies offer these award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories actually cover numerous genres, making space possible for most games within them.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Think about these outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles from a specific release, intense tile-matching in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. Which classification works among existing types? Simply put, no category fits.
Acknowledgment Issues
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers launched regularly without proper recognition at major award shows, except when they manage to fit for categories like Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated for anything that year
- Another creative title received no nominations in 2019
- A beloved organization game got ignored recently
- Only a few logic titles managed to sneak into independent or mobile categories
Importance of Logic Titles
These are often compact experiences, however the design of the puzzle game holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for over a decade.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with well-known building titles claiming status as most purchased experience; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. It would be easy to populate five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Puzzle game makers are working at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of essential manifestations of gaming itself. Just like film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait 35 years.
