Each time a prominent honors show approaches, there’s always a demand for the addition fresh award types to acknowledge overlooked contributions and satisfy the spirits of followers who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. The same goes for board games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification for why my demand is the most urgent and significant. This is the request: We need an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and inevitably start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. It's understandable that cinema institutions avoid this approach. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of video games, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify one unified medium.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, 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-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Between them, these six categories actually cover many game types, making space possible for most games within them.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. What category would fit them between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers released every year without proper recognition in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated for anything that year
- Another creative title was excluded during that ceremony
- A beloved organization game was overlooked that year
- Limited numbers of logic titles barely qualified for small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
These are often small games, but the art in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Well-known matching games stand as the most-played games globally and have been for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with famous sandbox experiences for the title of most purchased experience; it also contends for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
The Solution and Justification
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. One could readily select five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home in important events. Puzzle game makers are working at the hard edge game development, creating some of the purest expressions of gaming itself. Comparable to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
