You can make mini/micro games to play within animal crossing, but animal crossing itself is not a game.

Legos arent' a game either. They are a toy/tool. You can make games to play with lego or mine craft creative, but they in themselves are not games.

In Animal Crossing, there's a timer item. It basically just creates a "game end" situation. You can then use this timer to create various games (tag, fishing competition, etc). And on the new one, there's an island with a variety of games you can play.

Minecraft is a game as a whole, because it has a win/lose. The win case is to go to the 'end' and defeat the dragon. The lose case is simply dying. Hardcore mode would be the closest match to a "game". Survival has unlimited lives which somewhat reduces/removes the lose condition. Creative mode also removes the win condition, making it an interactive virtual sandbox.

That said, interactive media can easily be turned into a game, by adding "home" rules. Just like games can be made with just people (and nothing else). Tag is a game. But a group of people is not a game.

If we just had "interactive" as the criteria, you could argue anything is a game. Buying food would be a game. And that's simply silly.

A game is something with an objective and a way of failing to achieve that objective. The objective (win case) could be "get X amount of money" and the lose case being "die". In that case, you have turned life into a game. Inherently it's not a game. There's no win condition and no lose condition. But you can artificially add them.

So when I classified the above as game/not game, I was going off the default included rules. Anything could easily be turned into a game, and any game could lose it's "game" status, by changing what you consider winning/losing.

I could say: "seeing the game over screen in 100 games is my win condition" and "seeing a single credits screen" is my lose condition. Then I have made a game of playing games.

But with no win/lose, you aren't playing a game. It's simply a toy or a piece of art.