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Each time a major awards ceremony nears, you'll find a demand for introducing of new categories to acknowledge overlooked contributions and delight the hearts of fans who have specialized interests.

My colleague made the case advocating for terror-themed awards. It would be amazing. Equally deserving are board games, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward just as with other blinkered fanatics, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing and significant. Here's the proposal: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.

The Genre Classification Challenge

Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and typically spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. There’s a reason film award organizations don’t do it. Yet it remains an unavoidable compromise for the industry of gaming, which are so diverse it's challenging to consider them one unified medium.

For the full spectrum of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.

Current Gaming Award Categories

Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications successfully include numerous genres, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.

Not so for logic-based experiences. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, all very different: structural challenges in a particular game, fast-paced pattern recognition in a different title, thought-provoking social scenarios of a third title. Where could they possibly go within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.

Recognition Challenges

Many instances occur of brilliant puzzle games released every year lacking appropriate categories at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.

• A renowned logic title wasn’t nominated in any category that year
• Another creative title was excluded during that ceremony
• Well-received sorting experience was overlooked recently
• Just some puzzle games scraped into niche award types

Significance of Puzzle Games

These are often compact experiences, but the art in brain-teasers carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games count as most popular titles globally maintaining this status for over a decade.

The famous puzzle experience rivals popular creative games competing to become most purchased experience; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones within interactive entertainment, while interacting across multiple categories.

Proposal and Rationale

Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. You could fill five nominees with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave numerous deserving experiences.

To emphasize again, these include experiences without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators are working at the demanding boundary game development, creating some of the purest expressions of gaming itself. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.