I disagree completely. It only doesn't work if you refuse to accept that people are speaking for themselves and have a right to their own views.
Ultimately, you are free to ignore other people's comments. But if you are going to pay attention, then you have to put some energy into actually listening. The common exchange I've seen is something like....
A: I think 4E is too videogamey because X, Y, Z,.....
B: You said "videogamey". You aren't contributing to the conversation!!!
No.
"I think 4e is too videogamey because X, Y, Z," isn't the whole picture. What they
actually mean is "In my opinion, 4e does X, Y, and Z. Also, in my opinion, these things are representative of video games. Video games are bad/don't belong in tabletop games because I said so. Therefore, things X, Y, and Z are bad."
The problem is that what they
ought to be saying is "In my opinion, 4e does X, Y, and Z, and I don't like that it does those things because they negatively impact my game, and here's a list of reasons why that is the case."
When someone starts bringing something like how
videogamey something is into the picture, rather than focusing on
the actual issues they have with the game, the entire discussion becomes confused; we don't know what makes something videogamey to you, and inevitably when we try to narrow it down (by bringing up counter-examples that might help us determine what exactly is and is not videogamey, and why being videogamey is bad), it turns out that you don't actually dislike things that are videogamey.
For instance, if you had the following argument:
1) Powers are a video game element.
2) Video game elements are bad in tabletop games like 4e.
1,2: 3) Therefore, 4e should not include powers.
That would be
fine. That is a clear argument with a strong rational foundation.
That's
never the argument, though.
What the argument
actually ends up like:
1) Powers are a video game element.
2) Some video game elements are bad in tabletop games but some aren't, and the distinction between the ones that are
good and
bad is either arbitrary or non-existent.
At this point, you can no longer proceed to step 3, because its statement no longer follows. It has not been shown that powers are a bad thing in a tabletop game, because the justification used for their "badness" was rooted in the premise that video game elements are bad for a tabletop game. When it's shown (through counter-examples people like Cirno and I have brought up to try and determine what the heck people mean by "videogamey") that video game elements
aren't inherently bad for a tabletop game, and that what determines that rule element's "badness" is something else entirely that has nothing to do with whether or not it came from a video game, we realize that we just wasted a tremendous amount of time trying to determine why someone would rail against video games when it's clear that video games were never the issue to begin with.
Do you see how this makes discussions like this way more trying than they need to be? If we started with "I don't like X because it makes my game less enjoyable, and this is why:" instead of "I don't like X because it's videogamey and video game things are bad for tabletop games, don'cha know," we'd have
much more productive discussions.
tl;dr Stop saying "X is videogamey!" when you actually mean "X is like something from a video game but it is also something that I think is bad for tabletop games because there are plenty of things that I like about tabletop games that have roots in video games that I don't complain about as being videogamey, despite the fact that the word 'videogamey' implies that the reason I don't like it is that it comes from video games when that is clearly not the reason I don't like it because I do like some things that come from video games." Instead, say "X is bad for tabletop games," and explain why.