Allegorism

McKenzie Wark is the author of GAM3R 7H30RY, where he makes some interesting observations. allegorism is a tempting word, though (para 030):

Perhaps a game like The Sims is not just an allegory but also an ‘allegorithm.’ To be a gamer is a slightly different persona to being a reader or a viewer. Lev Manovich: “As the player proceeds through the game, she gradually discovers the rules that operate in the universe constructed by this game.”19 Alex Galloway: “To play the game means to play the code of the game. To win means to know the system. And thus to interpret a game means to interpret its algorithm (to discover its parallel allegorithm).”20 What is distinctive about games is that they produce for the gamer an intuitive relation to the algorithm. The intuitive experience and the organizing algorithm together are an allegorithm for a future that in gamespace is forever promised but never comes to pass. The allegorithm by which the gamer relates to the algorithm produces a quite particular allegory by which gamer and algorithm together relate to gamespace. In a game any character, any object, any relationship can be given a value, and that value can be discovered. With this possibility a destructive but just verdict can be passed on the profane world: it is characterized as a world in which any value is arbitrary or absurd. [LINK]


Also notable is the book's use of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards.