>or if they even were games in the first place
>few of them actually had clear loops
99.999% of this is fair criticism, but I still hate that this has become a metric for "is a game." I guess in the technical sense it is the dividing line between game and toy, but there's nothing wrong with a sandbox either. Doing something repeatedly until it gets stale isn't any better than "no clear goal."
>or if they even were games in the first place
>few of them actually had clear loops
99.999% of this is fair criticism, but I still hate that this has become a metric for "is a game." I guess in the technical sense it is the dividing line between game and toy, but there's nothing wrong with a sandbox either. Doing something repeatedly until it gets stale isn't any better than "no clear goal."