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Each time a prominent honors show approaches, you'll find a clamor for the addition of new categories to acknowledge overlooked contributions and delight the hearts of followers with niche passions.

My colleague has already made supporting a scary games classification. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, this being a passionate advocate's mission. Yet I need to apologize in advance when I prioritize since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification for why my demand stands as crucial and significant. This is the request: It's essential to create a category for puzzle games.

The Genre Classification Challenge

Categorizing art by genre isn't exact; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies avoid this approach. However, it represents a necessary evil within the realm of gaming, showing incredible range they barely qualify a single creative category.

To recognize the complete range of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.

Current Gaming Award Categories

Leading game ceremonies currently feature classifications covering Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories actually cover many game types, and you can find room for numerous titles.

Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere to put them. Consider three of recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: structural challenges in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition of another game, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. Where could they possibly go between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.

The Representation Problem

Many instances occur excellent brain-teasers published annually without proper recognition at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive Indie races.

• A renowned logic title got overlooked completely that year
• Another creative title missed out in 2019
• A beloved organization game was overlooked that year
• Just some brain-teasers barely qualified for niche award types

Importance of Logic Titles

These are often modest productions, however the design of the puzzle game carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most engaged experiences worldwide maintaining this status for over a decade.

The famous puzzle experience rivals famous sandbox experiences competing to become best-selling game of all time; it also contends for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, while interacting across multiple categories.

The Solution and Justification

Logic titles wouldn't face such difficulty. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.

Restating the point, these are games without proper classification in important events. Brain-teaser creators are working at the hard edge interactive creation, producing among most fundamental forms of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they warrant appreciation. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.