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As any significant awards ceremony approaches, you'll find an outcry to include of new categories to acknowledge underappreciated efforts and satisfy the spirits of fans dedicated to specific genres.

Another commentator has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. So would strategy board titles, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front since similar to single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument backing this proposal stands as crucial and significant. The demand is this: We need a category for puzzle games.

The Genre Classification Challenge

Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason movie academies steer clear of genre categories. But it is an unavoidable compromise for the industry of interactive entertainment, showing incredible range they hardly constitute one unified medium.

For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, while allowing diverse titles to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.

Current Gaming Award Categories

The major gaming awards offer these classifications covering Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications effectively encompass many game types, making space possible for most games within them.

Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Examine these examples from recent excellent titles, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. Which classification works within current classifications? Simply put, no category fits.

Acknowledgment Issues

There are dozens excellent brain-teasers launched regularly without proper recognition at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the extremely competitive Indie races.

• A renowned logic title got overlooked in any category in 2014
• Another imaginative release was excluded in 2019
• Well-received sorting experience got ignored recently
• Only a few logic titles barely qualified for independent or mobile categories

Value of Brain-Teasers

Frequently they represent small games, but the art behind logic titles is of massive significance. Iconic mobile puzzle games stand as most engaged experiences worldwide maintaining this status for many years.

The legendary block-stacking game challenges well-known building titles claiming status as most purchased experience; it also contends for top gaming experience. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.

Proposal and Rationale

Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. You could fill a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude so many good games out.

Restating the point, these are games without proper classification at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators function at the challenging frontier of video game design, creating some of most fundamental forms of the video game form. Just like cinema stunt performers, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.