This book’s first chapter acts as a primer on the discursive histories and unique properties of games and adaptations as well as setting the foundation for the systems approach that the other chapters will utilize and expand on. It begins from the deceptively simple premise that to treat game adaptations as game adaptations is to treat them as games and adaptations simultaneously, a task that requires an understanding of how these forms operate and the originating conflicts that haunt each discipline. Using the digital and analog versions of Ryan North’s “choose-your-own-adventure-style” gamebook parody of Hamlet (To Be or Not to Be) as guides, the chapter demonstrates how the “disciplinary ghosts” of fidelity criticism and the ludology/narratology debate have shaped the way adaptations and games have been thought about in the past despite being repeatedly exorcised by scholars in each discipline. Building on models of intertextuality inspired by André Bazin and Colin Harvey as well as game design discourse by Bernard Suits and Robert Zubek, the chapter goes on to present a model for looking at game adaptations as user-driven systems of experience centered on intersecting loops of recognition (between intertexts) and gameplay loops (between game mechanics). After applying this model to To Be or Not to Be, the chapter ends by positing the same framework can be applied to textuality in general, encouraging us to interpret games, adaptations, and in fact all texts as Barthesian systems of experience meant to open up textual interpretation rather than produce constraining essentialist definitions of either term.