I wonder how much of this is just awkward (and often lacking) nomenclature?
Back in the day, you could pin down a game by genre pretty easily. It was either a sidescrolling shooter, or an RPG, or a strategy game, etc. King's Quest was an Adventure Game, Wolfenstein 3D was an FPS, Zork was a Text Adventure, and so on.
We often can't peg many modern games into existing definitions of genre, our vocabulary for these things hasn't expanded as quickly as the permutations of the form.
If we're going to take the tack that videogames are art (which I think they are,) then "videogame" becomes the medium of transmission as I see it. And like other forms of art, this quickly gets muddy the further you want to go down the rabbit hole.
If I put paint on a canvas, then it's a painting; I am a painter. But if I glue a dead cat in there, is it still a painting? Or has it become a collage? If it's still a painting then, how many dead cats do I need to glue to a canvas before it becomes something else? What if I cut a hole in that canvas and stick a television in there? Is it then a movie, or a painting, or both?
With other, more... "mature" (as in they've been around longer and had time to evolve, not as a value judgement) forms of art, the medium is often less important than the message. You can have academic discussions of these definitions, but "It's not a painting," rarely does double duty as a broad dismissal of the work.
Generally, in other mediums, it simply boils down to artistic intent. I'm a painter if I say I'm a painter; it's a painting if I view what I've created as a painting.
So as I see it, if you call it a videogame and it's something I use a videogame console or computer too experience, then it's a videogame - "game" is less important than the usage of the word to refer to the artistic medium.
So for a lot of these games like Gone Home, I think you can still safely call it a "videogame," as that's the medium used to express that vision. But as such, you can still critique it (and fairly) along the same parameters you would any other game.
If you feel it's boring and doesn't give you very much to do - then I'd say that's a fair criticism. (Keeping in mind that all criticism is innately subjective unless we actually do live in a Platonic as opposed to an Existential universe where all objects can be measured against their approximation of the Ideal.)
Because engagement is a fair measure for any medium. I don't care profound your message behind gluing all those poor cats to the canvas is if I don't find it interesting to look at. I might admire the artistic vision of your 16-hour movie, but if I get bored watching it, then it's a fair point to raise in it's criticism.
So I think a discussion of what constitutes the definitions of the medium is important (though I don't think we'll ever settle on a universally-accepted one.) So I think for most of these sort of games, you make an argument about whether or not it's a "good" game, or how well it accomplishes it's intended goals - but we don't want to confuse those conversations with ones about whether or not it actually is a videogame in the first place?