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As any significant honors show draws close, you'll find an outcry for introducing additional classifications to acknowledge unsung work and delight the hearts of fans who have specialized interests.

My colleague has already made for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are board games, this being someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance for pushing forward because like all single-minded supporters, there's a strong justification for why my demand is the most urgent and important of all. Here's the proposal: There should be a classification for brain-teasing titles.

Categorizing Game Types

Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and typically spark debates and end in fuzzy definitions. There’s a reason cinema institutions avoid this approach. Yet it remains a necessary evil for the industry of gaming, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them a single creative category.

To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to be recognized, while allowing diverse titles to compete fairly, classification by type becomes crucial.

Present Award Structure

The major gaming awards presently include genre categories for Action, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Fighting, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications actually cover numerous genres, allowing placement for numerous titles.

This doesn't apply to puzzle games. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Think about these this year’s best games, all very different: building puzzles of one title, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles from additional release. Which classification works among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.

The Representation Problem

Many instances occur outstanding logic titles released every year without proper recognition at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested small studio competitions.

• One classic puzzle game got overlooked completely in 2014
• Another imaginative release was excluded during that ceremony
• Popular arranging title received no acknowledgment that year
• Limited numbers of logic titles barely qualified for niche award types

Importance of Logic Titles

These are often small games, but the art in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Well-known matching games rank among most popular titles globally continuing this trend for over a decade.

The famous puzzle experience competes with popular creative games competing to become highest-selling title ever; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, and they are in conversation with diverse game types.

The Solution and Justification

Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. You could fill multiple candidates interesting, varied, worthy titles each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.

Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories in important events. Brain-teaser creators operate at the demanding boundary game development, producing among most fundamental forms within interactive entertainment. Just like cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.