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Whenever a significant awards ceremony nears, there’s always a clamor to include fresh award types to recognize unsung work and fill the spirits of fans dedicated to specific genres.

My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. So would strategy board titles, representing someone's personal cause. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward because like all single-minded supporters, I have a cast-iron argument supporting my request is the most urgent above others. This is the request: We need an award type for logic-based games.

Organizing Gaming Categories

Classifying creative works defies precise measurement; opinions vary greatly, and inevitably spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. There’s a reason film award organizations don’t do it. Yet it remains an essential concession in the world of video games, which are so diverse 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 receive proper recognition, classification by type becomes crucial.

Existing Game Classification System

Leading game ceremonies presently include genre categories for Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, Role-Playing, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these classifications effectively encompass numerous genres, allowing placement for most games within them.

This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. No suitable classification appears for their placement. Consider three of recent excellent titles, each quite distinct: structural challenges from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, engaging interpersonal challenges in another game. What category would fit them among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.

The Representation Problem

Many instances occur outstanding logic titles launched regularly without proper recognition in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive small studio competitions.

• An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition for anything that year
• Another creative title missed out in 2019
• Well-received sorting experience got ignored that year
• Just some brain-teasers scraped into niche award types

Value of Brain-Teasers

Frequently they represent compact experiences, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Famous handheld logic titles stand as most popular titles in the world and have been for over a decade.

The iconic tile-matching title competes with popular creative games claiming status as best-selling game of all time; it additionally competes for best game of all time. Logic titles represent cornerstones for gaming as medium, and engaging with diverse game types.

The Solution and Justification

Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. You could fill a field of five engaging, different, qualified experiences each ceremony simply — perhaps, with difficulty, because you’d have to leave so many good games out.

Restating the point, these include experiences without proper classification during prominent ceremonies. Brain-teaser creators are working at the challenging frontier of video game design, producing among essential manifestations of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they deserve recognition. Let’s not keep them waiting decades.