Here’s my last response:
So don’t use it, personally.
I hate the word-phrase “pet peeve,” so I try to replace it with “peccadillo” or avoid using it. But I don’t write articles about how it’s holding back our society.
Honestly, I associated it with clambo, who wrote an article about it that someone once posted here as an example of one of his good articles. But I’ve noticed that other people also feel some distaste for it.
I mean, look: you can certainly mount a campaign to modify societal discourse so as to supplant “gameplay” with something else. You could possibly be successful, I guess. But I don’t know what the purpose would be.
Honestly, the only way I can see this being a worthwhile pursuit is if you are actually writing theory about how video games work and you have a rhetorical need to separate the way we interact with games into specifically defined qualities. Then, sure: coin some words. That’s typical in theoretical writing.
But if the goal is to replace “gameplay” with a word that means the same thing with the added bonus of not-being-“gameplay,” then I need to know what deleterious effect “gameplay” is having on our pastime.
'Cause all I ever hear is “it sounds dumb,” which is a lot like saying, “I’m afraid that people think my hobby is dumb.”