As any significant awards ceremony draws close, there’s always a clamor to include additional classifications to acknowledge overlooked contributions and fill the spirits of followers with niche passions.
My colleague has already made for a horror game category. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are board games, representing someone's personal cause. However, I must insist when I prioritize just as with other blinkered fanatics, I have a cast-iron argument for why my demand remains most pressing above others. The demand is this: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.
Categorizing Game Types
Categorizing art by genre defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. This explains why cinema institutions avoid this approach. But it is a necessary evil for the industry of interactive entertainment, which are so diverse they barely qualify a single creative category.
To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.
Existing Game Classification System
Prominent interactive entertainment events currently feature classifications covering Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these six categories effectively encompass a lot of ground, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.
Not so for brain-teasing titles. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Think about these outstanding current releases, all very different: structural challenges of one title, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges of a third title. Which classification works among existing types? Unfortunately, nowhere.
The Representation Problem
There are dozens excellent brain-teasers released every year that have no home at major award shows, if they accidentally match classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.
- A renowned logic title got overlooked completely that year
- Another creative title missed out that year
- Popular arranging title got ignored recently
- Limited numbers of logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications
Value of Brain-Teasers
Frequently they represent compact experiences, yet the craft in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as most engaged experiences globally continuing this trend for an extended period.
The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, while interacting across multiple categories.
Proposal and Rationale
Puzzle games wouldn’t have such difficulty. You could fill multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences every year with ease — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.
Restating the point, these represent titles without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers are working at the hard edge of video game design, developing some of essential manifestations of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting generations.
