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As any significant prize-giving event draws close, you'll find an outcry for the addition fresh award types to recognize underappreciated efforts and delight the hearts of fans with niche passions.

My colleague has already made for a horror game category. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are board games, this being a dedicated supporter's campaign. But they will have to forgive me if I try to elbow in front because like all single-minded supporters, I possess a compelling case for why my demand remains most pressing and important of all. The demand is this: We need a classification for brain-teasing titles.

Categorizing Game Types

Organizing artistic expressions is not a science; it’s very subjective, and inevitably spark debates concluding with vague boundaries. There’s a reason film award organizations avoid this approach. However, it represents a necessary evil within the realm of video games, showing incredible range it's challenging to consider them as a single art form.

For comprehensive acknowledgment of gaming accomplishments to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, genre categories are essential.

Current Gaming Award Categories

The major gaming awards currently feature award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, plus athletic and racing experiences. Collectively, these award types effectively encompass many game types, and you can find room for numerous titles.

Different situation exists for logic-based experiences. There’s simply nowhere to accommodate them. Examine these examples from this year’s best games, showing diverse approaches: the architectural riddles from a specific release, intense tile-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles of a third title. What category would fit them among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.

The Representation Problem

Many instances occur outstanding logic titles launched regularly that have no home in entertainment awards, unless they happen to qualify for categories like Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the extremely competitive independent game categories.

• An iconic brain-teaser got overlooked completely in 2014
• Another imaginative release was excluded during that ceremony
• Popular arranging title was overlooked recently
• Only a few puzzle games managed to sneak into niche award types

Importance of Logic Titles

Commonly they're compact experiences, yet the craft in brain-teasers holds tremendous importance. Famous handheld logic titles count as most popular titles globally and have been for many years.

The legendary block-stacking game competes with famous sandbox experiences for the title of most purchased experience; it’s also in the running as greatest title ever. Puzzle games are foundational for gaming as medium, and engaging with diverse game types.

Proposal and Rationale

Brain-teasers wouldn't encounter such difficulty. One could readily select a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games annually without trouble — or rather, with difficulty, given the need to exclude numerous deserving experiences.

To emphasize again, these include experiences lacking appropriate categories in important events. Brain-teaser creators are working at the hard edge interactive creation, producing among essential manifestations of gaming itself. Similar to film action specialists, they merit acknowledgment. Let’s not keep them waiting 35 years.