Reading means reading words. Watching means looking at something. And playing means doing something other than reading and watching. If a kid was reading and you asked what he is doing and he said playing you would think he was retarded, right? If a kid was watching other kids play and thought he was playing by just watching them, same deal, right? Playing can pretty much be anything active you are doing other than reading, watching, thinking, meditating, etc.
As Malpercio said:
You are not "just reading" dialogues in Planescape, it's not a fucking VN or a Book. Dialogue change and branch according to your choices as well giving you more options depending on the knowledge you accuired through your quest and your stats.
It's not the reading part that is gameplay but the making choices part.
Rather than kids saying they are playing while talking it's more like they say they are playing with one of those origami fortune tellers.
Talking is talking and is not playing. You can incorporate talk into play, but exclusively talking is not playing. Talking while roleplaying would be acting or improvisational acting, which can be in a play, but have their own verbs to differentiate them from what is commonly thought of as playing.
I see. I'm not playing chess when I'm moving one of my pieces because I'm "moving a piece" instead of "playing." It has a verb differentiating it from playing so what can you do?
Dark Souls has shit for monkeys. The whole game and myth that it is some holy grail of combat is just console monkiness and hipsterism at its bleakest and most harmful form. People want to be cool and like the super popular thing, so they force themselves to play and like it. Like all hipster nonsense, it is just shit for shitheads. Trendy fucking retards and tyranny of the masses. Let others think for you and decide what you will like.
You probably either
a) haven't played Dark Souls
b) gave up almost immediately because you were getting killed a lot
c) can't play any action games because of some deficiency, perhaps lack of reaction speed
d) just plain don't like action games
e) watched a video on Youtube and deemed it shit
I'm betting you think the likes of Ninja Gaiden and DMC3 also have "shit for monkeys".
Also, hipsterism, as I understand it, is rejecting mainstream and indulging in all sorts of vintage things. Isn't the "I liked it before it was cool" pretty much the hipster slogan? Twisting definitions is not cool. But then again, you reject all things cool, you hipster you.