As any prominent awards ceremony nears, there’s always a demand to include fresh award types to recognize overlooked contributions and fill the hearts of fans dedicated to specific genres.
A fellow writer has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. The same goes for strategy board titles, representing someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward just as with other single-minded supporters, I possess a compelling case backing this proposal is the most urgent and important of all. Here's the proposal: We need an award type for logic-based games.
Organizing Gaming Categories
Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and typically spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. However, it represents a necessary evil in the world of gaming, showing incredible range they barely qualify as a single art form.
For the full spectrum of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.
Current Gaming Award Categories
The major gaming awards currently feature genre categories for Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these six categories effectively encompass many game types, allowing placement for most games within them.
Not so for puzzle games. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Think about these this year’s best games, each quite distinct: building puzzles from a specific release, intense tile-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.
Acknowledgment Issues
There are dozens outstanding logic titles released every year lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, if they accidentally match classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging Indie races.
- An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated for anything that year
- Another creative title received no nominations during that ceremony
- Popular arranging title got ignored in 2021
- Limited numbers of brain-teasers barely qualified for niche award types
Importance of Logic Titles
Commonly they're small games, however the design behind logic titles holds tremendous importance. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as the most-played games worldwide continuing this trend for many years.
The iconic tile-matching title challenges famous sandbox experiences claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.
The Solution and Justification
Logic titles wouldn't face this problem. You could fill five nominees engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.
To emphasize again, these include experiences that otherwise have no home in important events. Logic title developers are working at the challenging frontier of video game design, developing some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Don't make them wait decades.
