Extra Credits made an episode about De-Gamification a while ago. But I am not sure if that's what you mean. They are talking about removing incentives and obstacles to allow the player to interact with the game world more on their own whims and not be too focused on success.
You could also be talking about the axis of Gameism vs. Simulationism. Gameism is when you design your game mechanics to be as fun to play as possible, even if that means to take gross breaks from reality and plausibility. Simulationism, on the other hand, focuses on making your game as realistic as possible without regard for the game experience. An example for this would be how to handle player injuries in a first-person shooter. Let's say the player gets hit in the leg. A simulationist game designer would have the player limp for the rest of the game. A gameist game designer would not impair them at all and have them regenerate their health after a few seconds. Neither extreme is usually desirable. A too realistic game will have poor game balance and be boring to play. A too gameist game will lack immersion and become unintuitive to play. Experienced game designers try to aim for the middle ground.
Or you could be talking about using games primarily as teaching tools. In that case you are developing educational games. These games are necessarily simulationist when it comes to teaching the skills they want to teach. But otherwise they use gameism in order to get the player to practice the skill properly. When you skip a red light in a game for teaching car driving, the game tells you immediately and you are teleported back so you can repeat the situation. You don't get a ticket in your mail a week later. They also can and should use gamification to reward the learning progress, so they aren't de-gamificated either.