Except is doesn't as can be evidenced by a new "discipline" used to study games as "games have never been studied before", which begins by not treating them actual games, but as narratives. Mass cultural conformity and suppression of ideas.
"We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control. ... Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone!" is what you're going for here?
Well, Pink Floyd is all well and good, but the song shows an extreme misunderstanding of academia. Really, if you want *conformity*, the last place you want it ensconced is in academic studies - the only way for an academic to stand out is to have something new and different.
Plus, "mass cultural conformity"? Have you somewhere presented a citation that there's some significant number of folks actually majoring in "game studies", and that they are *all* in this purported narrative-first form? Or did you just pull it up out of nowhere?
Edwards has disavowed The Big Model as wrong? That's news.
Edwards switched from GNS to Big Model. While BM does include several aspects of GNS, it also tosses out several aspects of the earlier theory, in favor of new ideas. In making that switch, there's an admission that GNS was not, "Teh Troof!" as he had effectively asserted for years prior to that.
I"m not seeking to propose a model on how all games everywhere should be thought of and spoken of, a complete redefining of game terms instead of an honest canvasing of their use.
Every time you are told that "game" doesn't mean what you assert, you reject it, and you insert your own very narrow definition. I don't see how you can consider that an "honest canvasing of their use", when you reject any use but your own.
History has been forgotten. Most people I know in the hobby for only 10-15 years have no understanding at all of why any of the things that used to be in the game could ever be conceived as being needed. Why is it mandatory for play to use dice? maps? minis? hidden information? note passing? awarding XP?
Have you considered that your own understanding of history may be a tad limited or inaccurate? Or that they have no understanding of why they are needed because we have learned in years past that they aren't, in fact, strictly *needed*?
But don't pretend RPGs are what the Forge sought to subvert them into "all along".
From my own experience, and from the rather cogent testimony of others (Celebrim, for example) it seems pretty obvious to me that RPGs have always been multi-faceted, rather than single-faceted as you present. The Forge didn't actually generate anything new - everything in GNS theory existed well before Edwards came on the scene. And The Forge didn't even get all of it!
So, no "pretending", but there's way more to the RPG story than what you present. Sorry.
I am not dogmatic as to what framework I (or anyone) uses to look at the facets of games. In fact, I strongly advise that you consider that analysis of games is akin to the
Blind Men and the Elephant.
With respect, we are all the arbiters of history. It is up to each and every one of us to insure things like this contemporary cultural genocide against gamers and game culture doesn't occur.
Hyperbole. Save "genocide" for when people actually die, please and thank you.
Or, do you just want to go ahead and Godwin the thread already, to get it over with?