feels like the term "immersive sim" is basically useless, maybe always was, and people just kinda stick it on any game that's sandboxy enough in terms of the solutions you can take to problems.
but, here's the thing. we need more of those. people clearly love games that have the attitude of "here's a bunch of rules to how the world works. you can solve your problems in a ton of different ways. have fun!" I love these kinds of games. I want to see more of them!
so, while I still feel weird when people attach the "imsim" label to games that aren't first person, or where you have a party, or that are literally CRPGs... maybe it's okay that the label is becoming less strict, and may disappear altogether in a decade. maybe we should focus on what it is people actually wanted from these games in the first place: that you can take a bunch of solutions to any given problem, including ones that the devs never thought you would ever do, and all solutions are treated as valid.
we should refer to any game that explicitly sets out to Be That Way as an 0451, and anything else that clearly isn't one of those just has immersive sim elements in the way that every single videogame now has RPG elements