I've been thinking about your fun/not fun columns, and I think you are focussing too strongly on the idea that these would be the only choices available for games. Instead, I would argue that games have a much wider range of possible emotions that they can invoke in their players, and that it is the strength, rather than the quality of the emotion that counts. Using the word "fun" to group all the positive emotions is too simple to describe the wide palette of human emotions; using the word "not fun" as the opposite misses the point entirely.

Example: what makes Syberia so evocative? It starts with a funeral, and tells a sad story of a broken family, of a reunion that came too late, and of an era of beauty that has passed. As such it cannot possibly be called "fun" - but that does certainly not make the game "not fun". Instead it invokes a different emotion, a feeling of sadness and loss, that resonates just as much with me, the player.

There is no need to aim for games that are "not fun", and doing so would be counter-productive anyway. Instead, games should aim to recreate the spectrum of human feelings (not all at the same time please) - and those games that do so best, will be remembered as classics.