Tetris Couldn't Succeed at The Game Awards — A New Category Might Solve This
Each time a major prize-giving event approaches, there’s always a clamor for the addition fresh award types to honor underappreciated efforts and delight the spirits of followers who have specialized interests.
My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would rule. So would tabletop games, representing someone's personal cause. However, I must insist when I prioritize because like all dedicated enthusiasts, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal remains most pressing and important of all. Here's the proposal: We need an award type for logic-based games.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and typically spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why film award organizations don’t do it. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of video games, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications effectively encompass a lot of ground, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Think about these this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles of one title, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Which classification works within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers published annually lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, except when they manage to fit for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated in any category in 2014
- Another imaginative release missed out in 2019
- A beloved organization game got ignored that year
- Only a few brain-teasers scraped into independent or mobile categories
Significance of Puzzle Games
Frequently they represent small games, yet the craft in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles count as most engaged experiences in the world continuing this trend for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges popular creative games competing to become most purchased experience; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, while interacting with almost every other genre.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. You could fill multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators operate at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Comparable to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.