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As any prominent prize-giving event draws close, there’s always a clamor for introducing fresh award types to recognize underappreciated efforts and delight the hearts of fans who have specialized interests.

A fellow writer has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would rule. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, which is someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front because like all single-minded supporters, there's a strong justification for why my demand remains most pressing and significant. Here's the proposal: There should be an award type for logic-based games.

Organizing Gaming Categories

Organizing artistic expressions defies precise measurement; it remains highly personal, and it will always generate discussions concluding with vague boundaries. This explains why film award organizations avoid this approach. But it is a necessary evil within the realm of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they barely qualify as a single art form.

To recognize the complete range of interactive entertainment excellence to receive acknowledgment, and for games of all stripes to compete fairly, genre categories are essential.

Existing Game Classification System

Prominent interactive entertainment events presently include classifications covering Action, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Together, these award types successfully include many game types, making space possible accommodating various experiences.

Different situation exists for brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists to put them. Consider three of this year’s best games, each quite distinct: the architectural riddles from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. What category would fit them within current classifications? Unfortunately, nowhere.

The Representation Problem

Numerous examples exist excellent brain-teasers released every year without proper recognition at major award shows, unless they happen to qualify award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, or the intensely contested Indie races.

• An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked for anything that year
• Another imaginative release was excluded that year
• A beloved organization game got ignored recently
• Just some brain-teasers barely qualified for independent or mobile categories

Value of Brain-Teasers

Frequently they represent small games, but the art in brain-teasers is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles count as most popular titles globally maintaining this status for over a decade.

The famous puzzle experience challenges famous sandbox experiences competing to become highest-selling title ever; it also contends for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones to the art of video games, and engaging with almost every other genre.

Recommendation and Reasoning

Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. It would be easy to populate five nominees interesting, varied, worthy titles every year with ease — actually, with challenge, because you’d have to leave many worthy titles.

And to reiterate, these are games that otherwise have no home in important events. Brain-teaser creators operate at the hard edge of video game design, producing among most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Similar to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay generations.