Well, this isn't a new discussion, of course. I think my .sig gives you an idea of my thoughts on the matter.
One thing I find interesting about this discussion is that folks tend to attack the term "videogamey" from the RPG angle, but I really don't see many folks attacking it from the video game angle. Not surprising given that this is ENworld, but still.
Let me contextualize.
My first video game was PONG. I received it in 1975, I think. To me, that is a video game. I grew up with the arcade boom of the 1980s. Video game parlors were filled with various games of skill and challenge. They were, by and large, relatively simplistic affairs with an emphasis on hand-eye coordination. As time passed, they did evolve....games began building more complex systems as the technology allowed designers to get more sophisticated (anyone remember
Thayer's Quest?) Home arcade games were largely adaptions of arcade titles or games in a similar vein.
D&D, even Basic D&D, was far and away more complex and sophisticated. Back then, we could generally agree that video-games shared most elements in common. Even D&D adaptions (like the Intellivision games) were basically simplistic affairs that copied the concept, not the actual rules. But, that was in 1984. With the arrival of the Nintendo Entertainment System, we started to see much more sophisticated games come out, designed from the ground up to work at home on much longer game cycles. Instead of being based on quarter-sucking designs, we saw games that were...just that, games. NES' Mario game had, what, 64 levels?
Parallel to all this, computer games were gaining much more sophistication. Wizardry, Bards Tale and Ultima certainly evoked the mechanics of D&D...and some of their gameplay was fairly D&D-esque, if limited. Ultima IV's emphasis on non-combat ideas and exploration was pretty much spot-on. Computer games often incorporated much more sophisticated interfaces and designs, stemming from board games and, too a lesser degree, pen and paper designs. This led to a growing schism between console gamer and computer gamers. Games like The Fool's Errand (1987), Alone in the Dark (1992) and WarCraft (1994) certainly showed off the sophistication that consoles and the arcade couldn't match.
But the consoles started catching up: games like Final Fantasy (1987), Legend of Zelda (1987), Mario Kart (1992), Street Fighter II (1992) and Resident Evil (1996) all had their own depth that went beyond the classic 'twitch' style of gaming. Games were getting more and more involved and complex. While the divide between computer gamers was still there, the games themselves were rapidly converging. Over time, the only real difference was in hardware power and the user input systems.
These days, I hear folks tying computer games, video game consoles and arcade type games into one package. To me, this muddies the waters a bit. When I hear "World of Warcraft" referred to as a 'video game', it sounds incorrect to my ear. The term appears to have broadened to any game played on an electronic device. That said, I can understand if the idea is, in the most broad terms, a declaration that it's a game that limits player options due to limitations of the medium in which it's delivered. I don't happen to agree that this is necessarily unique to video games, however. Moreover, I don't often see anything more than a broad generalization in most uses, which I find inaccurate enough to be frustrating.
Mass Effect 2
Gears of War
Silent Hill 2
Pitfall
Grand Theft Auto IV
Desktop Tower Defense
Super Street Fighter
Uncharted 2
Bejeweled
Final Fantasy 12
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
These example titles are in some ways very similar...but in others are radically, radically different. They are less limited by technology and more limited by designer intent. Yes, a game like Mass Effect 2 doesn't let you kill your own crewmen and then jump off a balcony to your death or return to the Normandy, kill the crew and take up life as a space trader in the Terminus systems. True, you cannot improvise a bomb in Silent Hill 2 to destroy Pyramid Head and leave town or get some rope, tie it to a pole and swing across the gap through the middle of town. No question, you cannot take Tidus and join the bad guys side in FF12, choosing to avoid messy moral ambiguities. But these are practical design decisions...not unlike when the PHB says you only get a feat at level X, that a rogue can't use just any old weapon or that Dailies can only be used...well, Daily (and note only one of these is 4e-specific; the perjorative of 'videogamey' has been leveled at 3E for far longer).
The use of the term 'videogamey' has been used by some as an accusation of 'dumbing down' of D&D to gain appeal amongst the great unwashed and the Joe Sixpacks, who clearly aren't smart enough to handle D&D unless it's made appealing to them. (The relative merits of a more concise ruleset being an unaddressed argument.) Others have leveled the accusation that D&D is stealing concepts from other sources in a blatant intent to mimic those games. I would certainly argue that there's some truth to that. D&D is evolving to what people are playing (and there are a LOT of WoW players in the world). Of course, given that most MMOs, CRPGs, JRPGs and many video games in general originally co-opted D&D's mechanics, this strikes me as at least partly a case of the snake eating it's own tail.
Others have used it for a metaphor for a ruleset being bound to specific restrictions that they themselves find unreasonable. Or alternately that it signifies that D&D, as a system, has become too rigid in the service of goals like game balance and meta-game issues and less about the interactive social experience that attracted them to the game in the first place. I can see a case for this, though given how easy it is to change or remove such restrictions in gameplay, this seems an odd sticking point. It was once said that D&D couldn't be played without hit points...and then Green Ronin created Mutants and Masterminds and showed how it could. Alternatives to the Vancian magic system are almost as old as D&D itself. ICE made it's name developing alternate combat/damage systems. Games like Amber, Dread and Castle Falkenstein removed dice from the RPG entirely.
My main problem with 'videogamey' as a term is its lack of specificity. Often, a person referring to 'video games' really is referring very specifically to console or computer RPGs or MMOs and not to video games as a whole. That forces every conversation where it is used to have to be analyzed.
When he said the DarkFire power was 'videogamey', what did he mean by that? Was Faerie Fire 'videogamey'? What about when I had it on a wand or could cast it 12 times a day at higher levels? It's use breaks conversations and doesn't help in understanding. YMMV.
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