Gaming is not the most refined form of play. The most refined form of play is unstructured, spontaneous, and uses imagination. Gaming is the opposite of that. It is essentially a grim struggle to perform at one’s best in a 100% defined environment and ruleset.
I’m a gamer. Mad respect for gaming. I use it to achieve flow and improve the precision and skill of my brain.
But I don’t really consider it “playing” in the sense that puppies and little kids play.
Speaking of this, I hate the fact that farcry just stuck with the farcry 3 format.
Farcry 2 had none of this “tag an enemy to make them always visible” bullshit. But then they did 3, and that was just their settled format from there on out.