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Each time a significant awards ceremony draws close, you'll find an outcry for the addition additional classifications to honor underappreciated efforts and delight the passions of followers dedicated to specific genres.

My colleague made the case supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. The same goes for board games, this being someone's personal cause. However, I must insist when I prioritize because like all blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing above others. Here's the proposal: We need an award type for logic-based games.

Categorizing Game Types

Categorizing art by genre is not a science; it remains highly personal, and it will always spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason film award organizations don’t do it. Yet it remains a necessary evil within the realm of video games, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute one unified medium.

For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.

Existing Game Classification System

Leading game ceremonies currently feature award types recognizing Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Together, these classifications actually cover many game types, and you can find room for numerous titles.

Not so for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to put them. Think about these outstanding current releases, each quite distinct: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. Which classification works among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.

Acknowledgment Issues

Numerous examples exist outstanding logic titles launched regularly lacking appropriate categories in entertainment awards, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested Indie races.

• One classic puzzle game got overlooked in any category that year
• A different innovative game was excluded in 2019
• Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment that year
• Just some brain-teasers barely qualified for niche award types

Value of Brain-Teasers

These are often small games, however the design in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games stand as the most-played games in the world continuing this trend for an extended period.

The iconic tile-matching title competes with well-known building titles competing to become best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.

Recommendation and Reasoning

Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. You could fill five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.

And to reiterate, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators are working at the challenging frontier interactive creation, developing some of the purest expressions within interactive entertainment. Comparable to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.