Where's the fun at?

On Saturday night, on a long drive down from Derby, I found my self in a conversations about game design.
During this conversation I pointed out that "The mechanics, at heart, once you strip everything else away, should be fun to play"

One of the other passengers turned to me and said that she simply did not understand what I meant.

So, I thought about it and tried to explain - and here I go again.

A game is made up of tasks, linked together with a context. Chess is a classic example of this, the task involved are "Moving the Pieces". The context is the game itself.
Monopoly is slightly more involved;
[Game[Your Turn[Moving[Rolling the Dice]]]]

Where does the fun come from? Partly from the context, partly from the task.

If the Task has no relevance to the Context, then there is no additional fun in performing the task. Like rolling dice in chess, if you then ignore the results.

If Task itself is dull, then despite the relevance to the Context, then it detracts from the game. The classic examples of this are Cutscenes in games and why a "skip" option is a necessity. Seen it once, fine and dandy. See it a dozen times, gets dull.

Basically, to sum up.

A task, to be 'optimal' fun must both be interesting enough to keep your interest for the length of performing the task and have some relevance to the context.

Remembering always, that games exist in a Social Context as well.