I think Crawford has two problems:
1. He's not a good storyteller.
2. Stories you tell using a computer need to be rule-based if the computation is expected to have a (controlled/authored) effect on the story's meaning (i.e. if the computer acts as more than a "projector").
What I find ironic is that he ended up making "Balance of Power - 21st Century" [1], posted lots of progress reports to his forums detailing all his experiments with numerical calculations to affect the play state, and then the finished game was all about voting for or against countries and tallying up. No storytelling to speak of, no characters you'd care about whatsoever. I believe that Crawford is an obsessed man who tragically misunderstood what a story is.