This absolutely does count as a manifesto!
I do, however, disagree with "a text-only game cannot lie to you." Because I hope to one day make one that does. I've seen very few games pull off the sort of rug pool that leaves players truly disoriented and reeling from something they didn't expect and I hope to one day emulate it.
But again, very well written. Some of the best games I've played, even with graphics, were ones where photorealism wasn't really a goal. (Return of the Obra Dinn is a recent example that comes to mind for me).