Tetris Wouldn't Triumph at The Game Awards — Another Award Type May Address This Issue
Each time a prominent awards ceremony draws close, you'll find an outcry for introducing additional classifications to recognize overlooked contributions and satisfy the passions of followers dedicated to specific genres.
My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. The same goes for board games, this being someone's personal cause. However, I must insist when I prioritize because like all single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request stands as crucial and significant. The demand is this: There should be a category for puzzle games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and typically spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason movie academies don’t do it. However, it represents a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, showing incredible range they hardly constitute as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these classifications actually cover a lot of ground, and you can find room for most games within them.
This doesn't apply to logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere for their placement. Consider three of outstanding current releases, each quite distinct: building puzzles in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.
Recognition Challenges
Numerous examples exist outstanding logic titles published annually that have no home at major award shows, if they accidentally match award groups including Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging independent game categories.
- An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition completely during that awards season
- Another creative title received no nominations in 2019
- Popular arranging title got ignored recently
- Only a few logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Significance of Puzzle Games
These are often modest productions, however the design in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most engaged experiences globally continuing this trend for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title rivals famous sandbox experiences competing to become most purchased experience; it also contends for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks within interactive entertainment, and they are in conversation across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter this problem. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences annually without trouble — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.
To emphasize again, these include experiences without proper classification in important events. Brain-teaser creators function at the challenging frontier of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations within interactive entertainment. Just like film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Don't make them wait generations.