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Sunday, October 11, 2026
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Tetris Couldn't Win at The Game Awards — A New Category Might Solve This

As any prominent honors show approaches, you'll find a clamor for the addition additional classifications to recognize overlooked contributions and fill the hearts of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.

My colleague has already made advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. So would strategy board titles, which is a passionate advocate's mission. But they will have to forgive me for pushing forward just as with other dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case for why my demand remains most pressing and important of all. The demand is this: It's essential to create a classification for brain-teasing titles.

Categorizing Game Types

Organizing artistic expressions isn't exact; it’s very subjective, and inevitably start arguments concluding with vague boundaries. It's understandable that film award organizations avoid this approach. Yet it remains a necessary evil within the realm of interactive entertainment, that demonstrate such variety they hardly constitute a single creative category.

For comprehensive acknowledgment of achievement in video games to be recognized, and to ensure all game types to have a chance for representation, specific award classifications remain vital.

Current Gaming Award Categories

Leading game ceremonies currently feature classifications covering Action-oriented games, Action/Adventure, RPG experiences, Combat games, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing games. Between them, these classifications effectively encompass many game types, and you can find room for most games within them.

This doesn't apply to brain-teasing titles. No appropriate category exists for their placement. Consider three of outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles in a particular game, the pulse-pounding block-matching of another game, and the sweetly sociological logic puzzles in another game. What category would fit them among existing types? Nowhere, that’s where.

Acknowledgment Issues

Numerous examples exist of brilliant puzzle games released every year that have no home at major award shows, except when they manage to fit classification types such as Handheld titles, VR/AR Game, or the intensely contested independent game categories.

  • An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition in any category that year
  • Another creative title missed out that year
  • A beloved organization game was overlooked in 2021
  • Limited numbers of brain-teasers scraped into niche award types

Value of Brain-Teasers

These are often small games, but the art of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles count as most popular titles worldwide maintaining this status for an extended period.

The famous puzzle experience challenges famous sandbox experiences competing to become most purchased experience; it also contends as greatest title ever. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks within interactive entertainment, and engaging with almost every other genre.

Recommendation and Reasoning

Puzzle games wouldn’t have that issue. It would be easy to populate multiple candidates with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — or rather, with difficulty, since numerous excellent numerous deserving experiences.

Restating the point, these are games lacking appropriate categories during prominent ceremonies. Logic title developers are working at the challenging frontier game development, developing some of the purest expressions of the video game form. Similar to film action specialists, they deserve recognition. We shouldn't delay decades.

About the author

Daniel Rodgers

Mira Chen is a data scientist and tech writer specializing in machine learning applications and AI ethics, with over a decade of industry experience.

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