Tetris Couldn't Triumph at This Gaming Ceremony — A New Category Might Solve This

Each time a major honors show approaches, you'll find an outcry to include of new categories to honor underappreciated efforts and fill the passions of followers dedicated to specific genres.

A fellow writer made the case for a horror game category. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are tabletop games, this being someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing above others. This is the request: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.

Categorizing Game Types

Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and it will always start arguments resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that movie academies avoid this approach. Yet it remains a necessary evil within the realm of gaming, which are so diverse they barely qualify a single creative category.

To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to gain proper attention, and for games of all stripes to receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.

Current Gaming Award Categories

The major gaming awards offer these award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these award types actually cover many game types, making space possible for numerous titles.

This doesn't apply to puzzle games. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Think about these this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. Which classification works within current classifications? Nowhere, that’s where.

Acknowledgment Issues

There are dozens of brilliant puzzle games published annually without proper recognition at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.

  • An iconic brain-teaser wasn’t nominated in any category in 2014
  • A different innovative game missed out during that ceremony
  • Popular arranging title got ignored recently
  • Just some logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications

Value of Brain-Teasers

Frequently they represent small games, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as most engaged experiences globally and have been for over a decade.

The famous puzzle experience rivals well-known building titles for the title of highest-selling title ever; it also contends for top gaming experience. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks within interactive entertainment, and engaging across multiple categories.

Proposal and Rationale

Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games every year with ease — actually, with challenge, since numerous excellent many worthy titles.

And to reiterate, these include experiences that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Logic title developers function at the hard edge interactive creation, developing some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Comparable to film action specialists, they warrant appreciation. We shouldn't delay decades.

Joseph Williams
Joseph Williams

Tech journalist and digital innovation enthusiast with over a decade of experience covering emerging technologies and consumer electronics.