TL;DR - GNS is dumb and it's proponents are either ignorant of it's origins or elitist pricks.
OK, so at one point RPGnet wasn't a woke-mind virus infiltrated hellhole. It was actually the best place to find free discourse on RPGs on the internet. This was in the 00s and maybe even early 10s, can't remember the exact year it went to shit but to shit it went. But this isn't that story. This is a story about the rise and fall of The Forge. The Forge was a site propagated by elitist armchair gaming pseudo-intellectual morons who had to quantify the fun of RPGs because games made them bored and the reason is simple and explained eloquently by Harvey Danger in the lyrics of the song Flagpole Sitta - if you're bored then you're boring. They did not take this introspection to heart, and instead thought "these games are all designed wrong".
Enter GNS, their initial consideration of how to quantify said fun. While never (or possibly often behind closed doors) spoken, Gamism (the properties of a game designed to be a game and have meta goals, etc) and Simulationism (the properties of a game designed to simulate a world, real or fictional) were considered 'bad wrong fun' and Narrativism was considered 'The One True Way'. Narrativism was specifically playing a game which had to have an overarching narrative theme and tone. This isn't simply a focus on 'storygaming' or the roleplay facet of RPGs. This is "the game should exist to tell a very specific sort of story, and if it doesn't then it's not a good design." Because 'game theory' in this sense, is specifically about game design and design goals, those goals being met making a game considered fun or competent by the weights and measures of the elitist pricks of the Forge. Hopefully you follow because I'm getting annoyed just explaining it.
Switching gears - So I don't like Rifts. The design of the system feels bad. Nothing in that system gels with me. I've attempted to make characters and hated every step of the process. I have never played the game itself. Now, I could make a website talking about why my subjective opinion is objective truth (or scientific, by labeling it 'theory') and multiple essays explaining why people who play Rifts are brain-damaged (this is not hyperbole, at one point one of the 'luminaries' of the Forge called either oWoD Storyteller players or D&D 3.X players brain damaged en masse. I don't remember which because I didn't have my quotebook ready to jot it down) and therefore become an elitist prick, or I could merely hold that opinion to myself and allow people to continue playing Rifts even though I don't like it because to each their own and who the fuck am I to tell them otherwise? The rational person picks option B. Those who unironically frequented the Forge near universally picked option A.
At some point they switched gears and while never disavowing GNS and continuing to talk about it, they receded further into their own asses and wrote a new 'theory' called 'The Big Model', but it didn't have the marketing or gusto that GNS did (I don't even remember what the fuck The Big Model was about, it seems like nobody remembers the goddamn term). Eventually, like all stupid pointless things enjoyed by pricks, the Forge closed up shop after declaring victory. Now more than a decade later, the games they made are whispers in eternity. Farts in the sandstorm of forever. Nobody plays them. Nobody's even heard of them. They had all the impact of Ozymandias' reign.
