🔗 Share this article

Whenever a prominent honors show nears, there’s always an outcry for introducing fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and fill the hearts of followers with niche passions.

A fellow writer made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. So would strategy board titles, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. However, I must insist when I prioritize just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing and important of all. This is the request: There should be a category for puzzle games.

Organizing Gaming Categories

Classifying creative works is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and it will always start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. Yet it remains a necessary evil in the world of gaming, that demonstrate such variety it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.

For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.

Current Gaming Award Categories

Leading game ceremonies currently feature award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these award types successfully include numerous genres, and you can find room for most games within them.

This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Consider three of outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. What category would fit them between these six categories? Nowhere, that’s where.

The Representation Problem

There are dozens excellent brain-teasers launched regularly lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.

• One classic puzzle game wasn’t nominated in any category during that awards season
• Another imaginative release received no nominations that year
• Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
• Limited numbers of brain-teasers managed to sneak into small studio or handheld classifications

Value of Brain-Teasers

Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Well-known matching games stand as most engaged experiences worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.

The legendary block-stacking game challenges popular creative games competing to become best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and engaging with almost every other genre.

Proposal and Rationale

Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. One could readily select five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.

And to reiterate, these are games lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators are working at the demanding boundary of video game design, producing among the purest expressions of the video game form. Similar to movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait decades.