This article introduces the concept of System Art and lays a foundation for creating a cohesive and functional framework for artistic interactive system analysis. The paper applies Russian Formalist theory for that purpose, explores the existing literature that covers such topics as Art Games and Videogame Formalism, and identifies the gaps in the currently existing works that should be addressed before building such framework: the lack of clearly defined interactive system elements, the lack of artistic device categorization, the lack of understanding of the role meaning plays in an artistic piece, and the lack of understanding different types of Defamiliarization effect – a notion proposed by Russian Formalists (Shklovsky, 2015) and adapted to games by Mitchell (2016). This article builds a foundation for creating an artistic system-oriented analysis theory, that would in turn be able to become a part of a bigger framework for studying digital games as an interdisciplinary form of artistic expression.