Tetris Wouldn't Win at This Gaming Ceremony — A New Category May Address This Issue

As any prominent honors show nears, you'll find an outcry to include fresh award types to recognize underappreciated efforts and fill the spirits of fans who have specialized interests.

A fellow writer has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are tabletop games, this being a passionate advocate's mission. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward because like all dedicated enthusiasts, there's a strong justification backing this proposal is the most urgent and important of all. The demand is this: It's essential to create an award type for logic-based games.

The Genre Classification Challenge

Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and it will always start arguments and end in fuzzy definitions. This explains why film award organizations don’t do it. Yet it remains a necessary evil within the realm of video games, which are so diverse they hardly constitute one unified medium.

To recognize the complete range of achievement in video games to receive acknowledgment, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, classification by type becomes crucial.

Current Gaming Award Categories

Leading game ceremonies presently include genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these six categories actually cover many game types, allowing placement accommodating various experiences.

Not so for puzzle games. No appropriate category exists to accommodate them. Think about these outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles from a specific release, the pulse-pounding block-matching from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios in another game. What category would fit them between these six categories? Simply put, no category fits.

The Representation Problem

Numerous examples exist outstanding logic titles launched regularly lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit award groups including Mobile Game, Virtual reality experiences, and the highly challenging small studio competitions.

  • One classic puzzle game got overlooked for anything in 2014
  • Another creative title received no nominations during that ceremony
  • A beloved organization game received no acknowledgment recently
  • Only a few logic titles scraped into small studio or handheld classifications

Value of Brain-Teasers

These are often modest productions, but the art behind logic titles carries substantial weight. Iconic mobile puzzle games rank among most engaged experiences in the world maintaining this status for many years.

The legendary block-stacking game rivals famous sandbox experiences claiming status as highest-selling title ever; it additionally competes as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational within interactive entertainment, while interacting across multiple categories.

Recommendation and Reasoning

Logic titles wouldn't face that issue. One could readily select multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.

Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories in important events. Brain-teaser creators function at the demanding boundary interactive creation, producing among most fundamental forms of gaming itself. Similar to cinema stunt performers, they warrant appreciation. Don't make them wait 35 years.

Cindy Johnston
Cindy Johnston

Maya Chen is a film critic and entertainment journalist with over a decade of experience covering Hollywood and indie cinema.