yeah, system is a big word. i'm using it v loosely as defining all interactivity and programmed aspects. all non-visual/audio code, but maybe that too, esp if procedural visuals/audio. we are also talking in simplistic ways of systems as separate from everything else, but as we experience games/media that really doesn't make sense... let's continue anyway!

your three examples are good, but they make me realize they're still limited ideas when done directly/in isolation. that is without considering the bigger picture (which I kinda implied at points in the last pastebin). like, I think we need to stop seeing systems in games as having to stretch across the game's entirety. we should be more comfortable with smaller systems, that come and go and juxtapose with each other. this means that each instance of a system is meaningful in its own right, doesn't stretch beyond its capability and importantly, doesn't dominate the experience, skinning it (I should think of a better word for this, "gamify"? although i like skinnnig..).

depending on the structure of your game it is much more common to have lots of systems competing. this competition should either be interesting or intentional, or you need to minimize it, by making the system, esp. if the system stretches across your game, as invisible as possible (a pause on a dvd player is usually pretty invisible).

like don't think of an entire game has fitting into one of these three categories, but think of all the different mechanics within being in each of them to various amounts (and adding a fourth category of invisible).

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on your examples.. the sim.

like a sim would not only miss so much about capitalism as you say, it also fails to make sense of it? to pull meaning out of the simulation. like you could read census data for 1950's london, or read a good story set there. very different levels of pulling meaning from..

any example is going to be complicated, esp with traditional games, because they're usually not very focused. so harvest moon i think is an interesting example in, while i haven't played that much of it, that unlike say candybox it ties its sim-like representation of production to the life of a person (and this is emphasized also in the aesthetic, setting, etc, but leaving all that aside...). so you have two different sims mixing together in a sense, making them both more meaningful in a certain way.

however being a traditional large-scale (ie: not 1 minute experiment) videogame, I think it's also inevitably going to be really muddled and weighed down trying to be a videogame. i wouldn't be surprised if the original HM was trying evoke certain feelings, and that since then, they're following the tropes they created and dressing up being more sim like.

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on the metaphor, yeah they're only as worthy as the use you ultimately put them towards. if your entire game is just about one obvious point, you're gonna get an "okay so". esp, if your game is longer than a minute or two. again this is structure. I think metaphors are powerful though, and they should be used throughout your text. and the more nuanced and ambiguous and interpretative they are, ie: the poetic, the better. a game as a series of system metaphors would be dys4ia. (and dys4ia is also a good example of being much more than its systems though, being the greater than its whole combination of clashing elements of art, music, text and its series of systems.)

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lastly on anecdote, illustration. i don't think it always needs to be literally related to human experience. it might even be truer the more abstract the representation of a feeling.. this is super speculative areas, but i would say aesthetic aspects of problem attic definitely feel like this to me (and in a good way other systemic aspects feel more like metaphor)...

i feel like what you're saying here is more making meaning of the mechanic through context, and thinking on too big of a level.. and as a said in the last one i'm not sure "actual consequences" is important... (that's what made me respond!)

cart life is a good, tricky example. it clearly has sim aspects, but it also makes those systems meaningful by juxtaposing them within larger anecdotes, life as viewed from the perspective of these people, and smaller anecdotal mechanics (relationship to cops, through street license. the difficulty if being a single mum exemplified through the struggle of picking your daughter up from work). buuuut, for its human and messiness, it's too gamey and too systemic (that is the systems stretch across it), than what i usually have been thinking of as an anecdotal mechanic.

i mean often films are called "character studies", which is a great term. the film explores this person's character and lets you draw your own thoughts, rather than spelling it out using exposition for example, so it can get on with the plot. this would be an entire game as anecdote (beeswing?). buuuut, i think the second to second mechanics are really what we need to start maturing in games, and this means smaller mechanics.

so again it's important to think not of anecdote mechanic as stretching the entire game. mechanics that come and go, existing for a few seconds to illlustrate their point. if everything you're trying to say is wrapped up in one system, that's really fragile. hmmm.. i wonder if parts of dys4ia would also maybe fit anecdote (I would need to play it to see how direct each part is, i remember it being very direct...), i guess regardless the line between anecdote and metaphor is fuzzy. i *think* it's just another level removed. you're representing something that speaks to x in some interpretative way, rather than you're representing x as y. it's an indirect representation, not purporting to be a direct representation and not purporting to be the thing directly. it's as meaningful as the audience reads into it.

like the more towards sim a system is, the more durable it is for long play, but only because it takes over from all the other aspects skinning it.

tangentially, i think it's important to note, when i say anecdote or structure i don't mean story either. story is a great way to pull an audience through and provide an easy parcelled way in for your audience, but it is just one tool. and it is not meaningful by itself. it may be truer or not, to what you want to say to have a clear story. it can be another element of your game pointing to a deeper collection of ideas..

Yes. I would agree totally with the last paragraph. I think the former is more honest. To say "here are some small aspects of something that perhaps illuminate something greater for you", rather than "here is the entirety of something, or more commonly, here's the entirety of what's important about something, ready for you".