Quick thought.
I don’t think that he was objective. But I don’t think objectivity is necessary for theorists to accurately capture and model phenomena (particularly when they have a lot of observational evidence). And honestly, I don’t know that he wasn’t completely objective going into the sort of gaming experiences that ultimately shaped him (nor does anyone else).
So in terms of my understanding of what he liked/didn’t like, it goes as follows:
He certainly liked Gamism.
He had a complete love affair with Process Simulationism (and had a huge amount of experience with it).
He very much, clear as day, did not like GM-facing, GM-directed, Illusionism-intensive High Concept Simulationism because he felt it was play that was unfun and violated social contract because it failed to meet either the evinced goals of play or the implicit goals of play (you can find incoherence and dysfunction in there). Whether or not the italicized is true or not is another question. But he had a huge amount of experience with this and profound disappointment in the play. Narrativism was basically a reaction to this (because that is what he expected out of this form of play).
Now I have no idea how he felt about Table-facing, System-directed, Storygaming as High Concept Simulationism like Fate? No idea.
He obviously, among others put in the work to build out and reify Narrativism. We know how he felt about that.
When he finally played 4e a few years back, he loved it and called it a successful Gamism + Vanilla Narrativism game so I know that he feels that hybrid designs are capable of existing (he postulated that G + N play nice together over the years.
He played Blades years ago (another Gamism + Narrativism Hybrid) and (as I write above) had an unfortunate and clearly misinformed take on it (though he couched it heavily and may have fully drawn back from it sense).
So, on the whole, I don’t feel like he dislikes much in the way of these agendas. Again, I don’t know how he feels about Fate (if I had to guess it would be that he doesn’t like it), but on the whole, the only thing I know that he doesn’t like is a particular brand of High Concept Sim because of the italicized I wrote above. Now, full disclosure (as many of you probably know), I spent the overwhelming majority of my GMing since 84 running brazenly, unapologetically Gamist D&D crawl games (often full blown Pawn/Token Stance). The first time I felt unwelcome in this hobby was the late 80s when the hobby took a HUGE and aggressive turn toward GM-Directed High Concept Sim. It was at that time when my gaming was constantly attacked for shallow “roll-play not roleplay.” That continued for a decade and a half (of which time I ran a nice chunk of Over the Edge + Everway and plenty of, to myself but not my players because they expressively asked for it, very unrewarding GM-Directed, High Concept Sim where I mashed the pedal to the floor on Setting Tourism + Metaplot). It (“roll-play not role-play with a side of OSR/3.x vs Forge culture war) then started again in 2008 during 4e.
Now the thing is, the majority of play in the hobby is clearly GM-directed, High Concept Sim with some Gamism feathered in and then muted (as the dictator of the through line of play) via an abundance of free play/vignettes and then subordinated here and there because of clash with story or inviolable immersion priorities and then feathered back in (etc). But that is the only thing that is negatively connoted in the essays as far as I can tell.
The problem is, that is The Big Dog (and The Big Dog knows it and if you don’t know…prepare to be reminded!) and has been so for…30 years? So its not a % # of play styles with these framing issue in the Forge model. It’s that there is a lot of subtly variant subsets (3 examples would be some have more PC-build intense Gamist through lines and Power Fantasy than others, some are totally unstructured freeform and borderline LARP, some follow the metaplot most of the time and then get off of it now and again and change playstyle to a nearly full-bore Gamism crawl phase, etc) that fall under that GM-directed, High Concept Sim header. This is where the 6 cultures of play do their best work with Trad + Neotrad/OC + Nordic LARP. The Big Dog plays those and drifts them and brings in Classic (Gamism) priorities to one degree or another.