Do games count?

     Obviously they count. Games are, to a greater or lesser degree, immersive fiction. The level of immersion as regards the fiction, and as regards to mechanics of the games themselves, varies of course. The fundamental premise of putting you into a situation where events happen in a non-real-world way is the core of fiction, even for games as simple, narratively speaking, as Pong. Leave aside the fact of why you're playing, in a narrative sense, as there's no  "you are a ping pong champion defending your title from those evil communist Russians" or similar elaborate backstory. Just accepting the fact that you are playing on a virtual field makes the concept count within the realm of digital humanities.
     Granted, a richer, more immersive story can lend more to the experience, which is why ARGs like Year Zero fit well into the area of study. Taking reality as we know it and pushing it that little bit, adding that layer of fiction to it, gives a chance to redefine how we react to both the new "reality" and the original. There's a very simple cell-phone application, Zombies, Run, that essentially takes advantage of the mapping/GPS capabilities that smart phones possess. There's nothing fancy to it, it just takes a map and adds in a number of zombies that move towards you at a variable speed. A simple, elegant concept, and one which uses what was there and incorporates what isn't in a real-time environment. Now, instead of going for a morning jog, you're trying to outpace the ravenous dead.
     Zork is an excellent example of how a game can count, both from the player side of the screen and the programmer side. From the end-user perspective, you wander around textually, collecting items, avoiding pitfalls, watching out for that damned grue, etc. Items held can have uses, often very specific uses to help you progress further, similar conceptually to (and predating) the more graphics-oriented Shadowgate. Combat isn't a key feature, and rarely happens. Rather, puzzle-solving is the focus. The programming side is where things get interesting, though, as now a game designer, another human, is required to anticipate the interactions the user will have, and code the likely responses into the game. Elements come into play beyond sheer coding, such as grammar and syntax (users must issue commands in an understandable way such as "look at object" or "see object" for the game to process the commands), human expression (typing "yell" or "scream" causes a frustrated cry, which I've given frequently while playing), simple memory and sense of direction (how far north can I go, anyway?) and so on. The programmer in essence has to write around the possible foibles of the player, and work them into the game, either allowing the player to proceed despite them or forcing them to take action to make their desires more clear. So video games, to a degree, become psychological tools as well. This is more apparent in current times, of course, where games, like movies, employ visuals, soundtracks, and other sequences of data to try and set the mood the designer wants, but Zork is a perfect example of how even in the earliest days of video games the games themselves represent significant objects within the digital humanities field.