When I'm studying game design we spent a lot of time defining "what is a game?" While this is a good exercise, ultimately I think people shouldn't care about any label, or any is X Y questions, what matters is if you think the thing is good, if it's enjoyable etc.
You are aware that I said ‘at least one’, right? Although Minecraft has all three. It has a scoring system literally named ‘score’, Hardcore mode ends if you die, and killing the Ender Dragon rolls the credits.
Ok, so Harvest Moon and similar farm game are not games. Games about crafting are not games. The Sims are not games. I could go on but I think you already realise that your definition is not valid. Btw, I am not disagreeing with the claim that Jeremy's games are video games
If all your Sims die, is that not a failure? Harvest Moon has Steam achievements. (And a ‘best ending’ category on speedrun.com.) You could go on, but if those are the best you could think of, I don’t think it would be very productive.
In the Sims, mortality only applies to adults not toddlers and below, so only a portion of them can die.
How is a Steam achievement a score? A score is a scalar value not a Boolean one. And arguably it is not part of the game but part of Steam. You won't get Steam achievements of any game if you get it from another store. But using the Store achievement definition, Jeremy's games also qualify because they have Steam achievements (most games on Steam do have the achievements even those that fall outside of your definition of game).
How is toddler immortality relevant? A failure state exists. If toddler-only households are viable, that’s just a design oversight, which is an unrelated issue.
I never said that steam achievements were a score. Please try to read my posts. I thought it would be obvious that they represent a success state. I also note that you ignored the fact that Harvest Moon literally has an ending.
Also, I don’t know why Jeremy’s games qualifying is relevant. I never said they don’t.
Achievements are baubles and trinkets. They are neither necessary nor sufficient for something to be a game.
And I don’t know if you’re aware, but a vast amount of Sims players use the game to build and decorate houses and then play out stories in them. The Sims dying is not. A lose condition, but the final page of their story.
“Art with game tropes” implies that “regular games” aren’t art. Which I disagree with. We may not have gotten Shakespeare yet, but writing was an artistic medium before him just as games are one before its version of him.
And whether a particular piece of software is a game is also not clearly defined. This has been a big argument several time, see the one over Gone Home and walking simulators.
Others later down argue over Minecraft and “a win state, fail state, and scoring systems”. Minecraft did not have any of these for a long time, but it would be unconvincing to say that it only become a game after it gained them.
You misassume my meaning. When I say I games are not art, I don't mean they are not as good / important than art. I just mean they are different. In fact, if anything, I think they are much more important than art.
If before I missasumed, now I don't understand. What is your meaning? What do you mean by art, and different how?
I see games as a form of human expression just as writing, movies, painting, etc. They many be newer (video games certainly are) and they may be in a categorically different medium (human agency) than the others, but they're still art. And maybe one day soon someone will produce a game worthy of being called Art with a capital A.
In my view, which is mostly inspired by Huizinga's works, the game is a constructed set of rules. The main game is the culture itself, that branches into the great playing tree of humanity. The video games are not that different from any other set of rules, but they are interactive, immersive and self-governing/autonomous, which is an unusual set of qualities for a media.