Whenever a prominent awards ceremony approaches, you'll find a demand for introducing additional classifications to recognize overlooked contributions and delight the spirits of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.
A fellow writer previously argued advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are tabletop games, representing someone's personal cause. However, I must insist for pushing forward because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification backing this proposal is the most urgent and significant. The demand is this: We need an award type for logic-based games.
The Genre Classification Challenge
Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why cinema institutions steer clear of genre categories. Yet it remains a necessary evil for the industry of gaming, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them as a single art form.
To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Present Award Structure
The major gaming awards presently include award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these six categories effectively encompass a lot of ground, making space possible for numerous titles.
Not so for logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Think about these this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges from a specific release, intense tile-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. Which classification works among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.
Recognition Challenges
There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games published annually that have no home during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- A renowned logic title received no recognition in any category in 2014
- Another creative title received no nominations in 2019
- Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
- Just some logic titles scraped into niche award types
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent compact experiences, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for many years.
The famous puzzle experience challenges well-known building titles 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.
Recommendation and Reasoning
Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. You could fill five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.
To emphasize again, these represent titles that otherwise have no home in important events. Logic title developers operate at the hard edge game development, creating some of essential manifestations of the video game form. Just like cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay 35 years.
