This is probably the single best response I have seen to my article. Alas, I don't have time to do a detailed response right now. So instead I will have to be superbrief, which may not be very helpful.

- I *don't* actually draw a clear line between the game system and the experience, *except* when I am looking at things formally, as in this article. In other places I have argued quite strongly for the importance of the experience layer (narrative included). But even when I am lookin at things formally, it's like drawing a line between the skeleton and the flesh. We need both to make a body.

- On replayability... To quote myself (rude, I know): "the definition of a good game is one that teaches the player everything it has to teach before they stop playing." I dive into replayability in great detail in places other than this essay. I define it *cognitively*, not systemically, in "A Theory of Fun." Your digression on replayability actually lines up perfectly with this.

Rather, what I was getting at was that a rich system, layered with rich experience, is going to be the richest game overall. A very poor system may well have a good experience layer, and indeed be fun, but it's going to be more readily consumable. A truly GREAT experience layer is reapproachable because it has great depths to it and you also discover new things as you revisit it. (There's also "comfort re-reads" which are a different beastie, triggering completely different emotional pathways).

- On service games, btw, the "release more content for a mastered system" is generally not a great model over time. Players see through it and leave; that's why service games tend to need to introduce new mechanics over time.

- I agree with everything in your section on agency! I don't define "a rich set of systemic problems" as being about finding alternate avenues to solve the same problem. I see it as being about a rich problem *type* that constantly refreshes with new *specific problems.* On the extreme end, think of Tetris: simple ruleset, large large array of "actual problems." As a result, it feels fresh very deep into the experience. First-person shooter play is the same, at a radically different level of complexity in terms of ruleset. Poker, the same, and so on.

- I think your final paragraph actually perfectly describes the sort of cognitive puzzle I assert lies at the heart of gameplay. (I also think that narrative games these days are almost never the way you describe, alas). Basically, you are saying that the puzzle is figuring out how the storyteller's mind works -- and I would argue that *especially* in the case of the LucasArts adventure games, that was precisely the exercise... in fact, it was in the Sam and max case, figuring out the sense of *humor* of the authors. That's a significant cognitive challenge (and one I consider completely valid in the game grammar). It's a complex system, admits of many variable scenarios (analogous to the varying situations in Tetris, Poker, or an FPS), and yet users can arrive at a heuristic to deal with it.

Basically, I am not sure we're actually in disagreement. :)