I'd agree with the ideas that you throw, but the only clear example I see are sandboxes. Those fall right in the terrain you expose, nothing to do until someone comes in and starts playfully messing arround with the environment.
But then, there's the opposite extreme. The videogames where the range of rules is so closely set up that adding or removing rules is clearly a different challenge. Here I include, well, the vast majority of commercial videogames that are desing to be understood and played as a videogame: usual platformers, commercial shooters, typical fighting games... I'd really have troubles in those cases moving the "videogame" identity from the software to the human experience of interaction with said software.
Does this makes sense? If so, why you'd say it is more difficult in that case?