I'm glad to see we have started to actually get through to each other you know?
That said, when I disagree with you I still really wonder how openly to let you know :)

I agree with many of your details, but if I understand the bigger picture point you are making correctly not so much.
I guess the big departing point for me is this: "What I'm saying is the spectrum of pastimes which count as "games" is immensely diverse, and a linear scale implied by the term "ludonarrative" is unhelpful."

I could be glib and ask unhelpful to whom? But I will spell it out. Books are very diverse, going from novels to dictionaries. They share properties with pamphlets, and with theater plays, and movie scripts, and oral storytelling - but they are not identical and the objective distinctions between the media formats are not inherently useless.

Games of course are not tied to a particularly format. They are rather a kind of interaction, which shares some aspects with communication, but is not just that. Therefore the objective way to define and limit games is tied to intent somewhat - almost everything can be approached as if it was a game. That makes the definition trickier, but not impossible to do I think. For example I find it very strange that the distinction between puzzle and game is more commonly understood - and if someone argues carefully about certain wargames or certain adventure games being so puzzley that they are hardly games in that formal sense - there will be little to no pushback. We all understood each other and moved on. But when we consider a similar delineation between games and narratives... well... I would say we step into a ideological minefield, but that would be my bias right? Still... something is very different about that discussion, even if I try to have it carefully and respectfully. You know what I mean? It feels like I am slaughtering someone's sacred cow, without that really being what I am trying to do.

Put another way I don't think saying some videogames are not actually games is necessarily an attempt to diminish not-games. My personal preference for games in the formal sense (which actually, is implied - I never said which kinds of videogames I prefer playing) does not destroy others' preferences. Books are not games and I love them more than games. My relationships are not games and I love them more than I do games. That someone looks at my expression that X is not Y and gets defensive is not really on me. It's on them.

And of course, I am not even really expressing it that clearly - because once burned, twice shy. And I find it somewhat troubling to be accused of all sorts of isms for having thought a bit about formal aspects of an hobby I enjoy.

Sorry if this was too defensive. But I guess it can still indicate where I am coming from when approaching a post like yours. And provide some roads to further discussion and agreement - hopefully.

Basically to me it is clear and obvious games exist with near zero narrative. That videogames developed in a somewhat different direction does nothing to change the fact that the more they focus on narrative elements, the more they risk crossing over into not-games - becoming more like movies, like books, like theater - than they are like games. It's just semantics...

What about time dedicated to each aspect? Metal Gear Sold 4 had a devastating ratio of time spent watching cutscenes and time spent actually playing the game. And it's in stark contrast with Metal Gear Solid V which has very few cutscenes by comparison and has buttloads of gameplay content. Metal Gear Solid V has objectively "more game" (as you put it) than Metal Gear Solid 4. Also if you look at absolutes instead of gameplay / cutscene ratios MGS V has "more game" than MGS4.

Time dedicated to delivering exposition during which the player has no way of interacting with the game (or where the interactivity is just heavily limited) and on which the player has no impact whatsoever is not playing a game.

And let's look the other way around: let's say a game has no exposition, no explanation for anything, no dialogue, no written text delivering any information, just the player shooting stuff and trying to get to a goal. That game obviously has no story.

Both gameplay and narrative can be expressed in quantities, in dozens of different ways, even and as such of course there are ratios between the two.

Actually the entire sense of the term "game mechanic" is to be able to deconstruct everything that constitutes gameplay and separate it into distinct units which yes, happen to be more or less countable. You can very much compare two games and say which one has more mechanics - not with perfect accuracy, naturally, with some things being up to interpretation, but still pretty well. Being able to do so is essential to a game designer as well as for figuring out how to play a game optimally. There is absolutely NO doubt that Dear Esther has fewer mechanics than say Super Mario Bros or Doom.

This thread was fun. I'm sad it died. Bring it back.

Wish granted.

This is a normal link that takes under 5 min to read, the title of which is tongue in cheek. Main takeaway I took was "Oh boy, this goes way back..."
The definitive history of games and stories

This links to a pdf by Gonzalo Frasca that clarifies several of the misunderstandings in the "debate that never took place". The main takeaway I took was on the confusion about what is a narrative as demonstrated by the need to define narratologists and narrativists. It's longer but more rewarding I think. Should be under 15 min read.
Ludologists love stories too