In a broad sense, a game object is

In a broad sense, a game object is anything in the game world that needs to be updated,
drawn, or both updated and drawn on every frame. Even though it’s described as a “game
object,” this does not necessarily mean that it must be represented by a traditional object in the
object-oriented sense. Some games employ traditional objects, but many employ composition
or other, more complex methods. Regardless of the implementation, the game needs some
way to track these objects and then incorporate them into the game loop. Before we worry
about incorporating the objects into the loop, let’s first take a look at the three categories of
game objects a bit more closely.