Cute, but over years of explaining it I think any explanation of Kafka that presents it as a queue is bound to leave the reader with more misaligned expectations than when they started (while also making them think they learned something, which can be even more dangerous). To keep the Factorio-esque framing, move the consumers, not the messages.
>>moreli+(OP)
Agreed. There's an important difference between things like Kafka & Kinesis vs RabbitMQ & SQS. The latter are conceptually queues, and the former are conceptually logs. Logs and queues can both be used in many of the same use cases, but it's important to understand how they are different.
>>kentm+f3
i.e.: Items are frequently removed from queues which have a shared "next item", while logs usually just get longer and each consumer is responsible for keeping track of their own progress or positions.
It's harder to think of factory-game analogies for logs, since they involve copying without altering the original sequence. It would have to involve some kind of moving non-destructive sensor or object-cloner mechanic.