As any major honors show nears, you'll find a demand for the addition additional classifications to honor underappreciated efforts and satisfy the passions of followers with niche passions.
My colleague previously argued advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. The same goes for strategy board titles, which is a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal is the most urgent and significant. Here's the proposal: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and it will always generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason cinema institutions avoid this approach. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise within the realm of gaming, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these award types effectively encompass numerous genres, and you can find room accommodating various experiences.
Not so for puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Consider three of this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges in a particular game, intense tile-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers published annually that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything in 2014
- Another creative title missed out during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game got ignored that year
- Just some puzzle games managed to sneak into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often compact experiences, however the design behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles count as most engaged experiences worldwide and have been for over a decade.
The famous puzzle experience competes with popular creative games for the title of highest-selling title ever; it also contends as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, while interacting across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have such difficulty. It would be easy to populate a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these represent titles lacking appropriate categories in important events. Logic title developers operate at the demanding boundary game development, creating some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Comparable to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay decades.
