Why specifically the RPG?

Why exactly focus on the RPG and not other genres of games? I think a look at the meaning of the acronym RPG (Role-Playing Game) is a great place to start. What is role playing? Well, a basic Google search brings this:

the acting out or performance of a particular role, either consciously (as a technique in psychotherapy or training) or unconsciously, in accordance with the perceived expectations of society with regard to a person's behavior in a particular context. (Google)

In the setting of an RPG as a video game, outside of hand movements there aren't really any physical actions put into a character (although I'd put money that this becomes a form within a century, possibly within two decades), but an unconscious acting out is definitely characteristic of it. Those who play RPGs have the luxury of choice, especially with more recent games. Speaking of choice, I was curious what Urban Dictionary would say, and it was, sort of surprisingly, quite relevant:

To act and speak as if you are the character you're portraying. To roleplay is as much about what not to say as what TO say. It means to keep your speech in the context of the setting in which your character (or avatar) exists. Context can be defined as both time and place. (Urbandictionary.com)

Keep your speech in context of the character

While he wasn't writing about role-playing, Robert Louis Stevenson's words fit in its context, when he writes about keeping a novel strictly to the business of it. He says that the author should

allow neither himself in the narrative nor any character in the course of the dialogue, to utter one sentence that is not part and parcel of the business of the story or the discussion of the problem involved.

Role-players shall not allow themselves to be irrelevant to the context they are in. Finally, my personal depiction of role-playing: a person acting, especially in a mental sense as another being in a certain setting, and placing conscious and subconscious priority of mind to the role they fill. This works especially with MMORPGs; most if not all players will make no distinction between between their character/persona/avatar and themselves. First person references to one's character in-game and often outside of it are the norm. Just the other day I heard a classmate talking about his character (I think it was FFXIV), using wording like "I'm a paladin" and "I had to stop attacking because I pulled the aggro." If the nerdy phrases here are too much for you, remember the important point is the first-person mindset in the context of one's RPG character.

"The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life." -Henry James, "The Art of Fiction"

So how does this fit in--how is the RPG genre of gaming the modern version of a novel? Well, one cheap answer would be to say that it is the modern adaptation of the "choose your own adventure" novel. I can't say I disagree with the idea, but as one who does not remember life without RPGs in it, I find that it is more. What about genre? Is the RPG a special genre of the novel? Or is it altogether another type of genre in fiction? Let's look at some of Northrop Frye's words, as he talks about the novel as a form of fiction:

The romance, which deals with heroes, is intermediate between the novel, which deals with men, and the myth, which deals with gods.
"From Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays"

Final Fantasy 14 (FFXIV). Lightning and Hope (among others) as the men who become heroes. Odin is the part of myth

So which are RPGs? Don't they deal with heroes, men, AND gods? SquareEnix's Final Fantasy 14 is one example where the characters are men who become heroes in a world with its own (and borrowed) mythology. Perhaps different games don't work as well as FFXIV does, no two video games are exactly the same, just as no two novels are the same. So how is the RPG specifically a novel? Thinking about the process of elimination, look at what Frye says earlier in his essay where he talks about the differences of novel and romance:

The essential difference between novel and romance lies in the conception characterization. The romancer does not attempt to create 'real people' so much as stylized figures which expand into psychological archetypes.

So, while the characters in FFXIV have a double role, being heroes as well as men, the characters, as seen through their dialogue throughout the game come across as being portrayed as 'real people,' not unlike how a good character in a novel is portrayed. Frye doesn't compare novel and myth here, but the "myth . . . deals with gods" and the RPGs focus on the stories of men. So again why make the claim that the RPG fits but other genres of games don't? In essence, the tropes found in RPGs are the most similar to those in novels.