I think you've found an interesting point here. I don't agree that this is some "slight of hand" by the author to try and convince your, but I do think you're c

I think you've found an interesting point here. I don't agree that this is some "slight of hand" by the author to try and convince your, but I do think you're correct that you can't draw your conclusion solely based on the one art project. I see it more as a failing of the author than a trick. SimCity does have an ideology, and it does have something to say with how it has weighed it's measurements of citizen satisfaction, but the author seems to fail at capturing that ideology and instead just talks about how minmaxing is bad. The rest of the article is interesting. There's plenty of people out there that don't even think about how the rules of the game frames the discussions you can have about it. It's just kind of a bad example.