WHAT MAKES GAMES "FUN"?

I don't know if I've got much to say about what makes games "fun" but I've heard it said that the true job of game design today is to get beyond "fun". If you think about other media such as film, book or music etc - We tend to accept the notion that a person could really care about a certain film, book or song/album etc... It wasn't because that thing was "fun". If anything it's usually the opposite - Challenging, moving, engaging, thought-provoking - None of these things necessarily involve fun whatsoever but this is precisely why film, music, art and literature are respected art-forms in mainstream culture and games aren't - because game design is stuck on this notion of "fun" being the goal. Yeah sure, as hardcore life-long game nerds we probably care about x game/franchise and would say there's something in the medium that has had a long term effect on our consciousness or life or whatever, but that's only us - within our "gamer culture".

Whatever "fun" is, I think that trying hard to manufacture the human experience of it is the surest way to miss the point entirely. I think a large part of fun comes from a sense of discovery and overly heavy-handed contrivance of pre-planned experiences is the antithesis of this. This is why we cringe at anything overwrought - When a game tries too hard to be fun it's like somebody saying to you "please like me! please like me! please like me!" without giving the player a chance to come to that place organically through their gameplay experience.

Eh, I guess I did have stuff to say about fun.

Games that interest me have an engaging storyline and a rich atmosphere populated by unusual and interesting characters. Everything else is just icing on the cake, but that's really what I'm looking for. After that, I don't care if I'm traipsing through dungeons, exploring dream-worlds for useless items, or solving puzzles, I just want to get into a weird little world of someone else's imagination and play around inside of it.