>>1774410
>This is a little silly if i have to be honest, does being left alone with a vague open ending stress him that much?
I had a somewhat similar discussion with an anon, some years ago, about the Sims not being games, but toys, because there was no real end-game or scoring system, instead you had to set up your own rules. To make this easier to understand, I will first give some real life examples: a ball is not a game, nor are rugby balls, tennis balls + rackets, bowling balls + pins, they are just toys, and using them you can play games, like Rugby or Bowling or Tennis. If you are uncomfortable with thinking of a tennis ball as a toy
your dog will consider it a toy, a Beyblade is a toy, but Beyblading is a game. A barbie doll or an Action Figure are toys, and you can make games using them, like which toy can be thrown the farthest, or put some plastic cups in a pyramid and see who can knock the most cups by throwing the toy. Lastly, you can have games, without toys, like Hide and Seek and Tag. Now to go back to the Sims, it's more of a Doll House(Toy), than a game, but you can make your own game out of it, like have a Sim become a Millionaire in X days, or make your Sim sleep with everyone in the neighborhood, but these are all self-imposed things in order to make it into a game. You need the Sims to play this game, the same way you need a rugby ball to play Rugby.
Now I mostly agreed with him, but if we go by this definition, then all those
Color the Map 4X Games, like Crusader Kings, are also Toys and not Games, and I am not so sure about this, or that people are ready to make such a distinction. Considering, how fragile a reviewer's ego was when they heard that games are not art, imagine someone telling them, that some of the things they have been playing, weren't even games, and we are not just talking about Visual Novels.