I know there is no right answer so what does everything think what makes a game fun for them?
What makes a game fun
Obviously this will all be very subjective, but...
Things that make a game fun for me include:
- Interesting mechanics, preferably with some variation so that I don't become bored with a repeated experience. If those mechanics are novel but not excessively hard to learn they may be extra fun.
- Good controls that are comfortable and stay out of the way; I should be thinking about the game-play, and never which button to press.
- An interesting theme.
Things that prevent a game from being fun include:
- Bad controls; if I have to think about which button to press, or if it's too easy to make mistakes it's very off-putting.
- Complicated menus that delay me reaching game-play; the menus should be straight-forward and allow me to be playing the game-mode I want with as few interactions and delays as possible.
- Excessive delays during play, whether that be from loading screens or simply because the pacing of the game-play includes excessively long rest periods.
- Bad tutorials that I can't skip through, especially on repeat plays; it's good for a game to help me learn to play, especially if the game is complicated, but if I figure out what I'm doing before the tutorial is over I should be able to skip the rest.
- Anything that breaks immersion.
- Most mistakes from "the no twinkie database", which I think do actually include all of the above problems.
Hope that helps you! 
As you said it yourself, it really depends on too many things. In general, I think thath a game can be seen as fun if it gives the player an evolving space of components. Be it evolving the player's skill to play, be it evolving an interesting and immersive story or be it evolving in competition in multiplayer. To me, fun would be to feel rewarded - to see your progress and realize that you've achieved something. It can come in all shapes and sizes - beating a high score, getting through an interesting story, looting that one good item that makes you go "Yeah ! Awesome !" or going past a serious challange in the face of a boss or a puzzle. It all depends on how the core mechanics are going to be handled. A big MMO game, like WoW would give you long term satisfaction by allowing you to slowly but surely increment your long term evolution - each raid counts, each quest counts, in the end you know that after investing your time, your character is going to evolve into something strong and it will make you happy. And that's just one of the many sides of such a big scale game. Now, to look at something really small - a casual game. For example Dumb Ways To Die. It's a game you would play for a couple of minutes in the subway with no real long term evolution. However, what it gives you is an evolving game pace. It gets faster and faster, each time you master one speed level. And mastering the speed level is where your evolution as a player is nested. Getting better and better at saving the guys in the game makes you feel good, because you are going forward with your skills. Ultimately, this makes you have fun.
And again, this can be just one of many, many interpretations and means of having fun. This is really a subject that cannot be covered easily.
Game Speed is another factor for game play. A Racing game should feel like a racing game where reflex is important. Code should feel responsive to the players actions.
For me this holds extremely true to certain type of role playing games. FPS and Fighter Simulations Code should feel like when you pull the trigger or through a punch, the game code is responding immediately.
Strategy, should keep to a turn based system. Real Time Strategies (RTS) with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) player tend to favor the software as levels progress, I usually lose interest after the 5th or 6th level once progression has been stopped.
Games should Challenge The Player, If Failure is part of the game design then so be it. If your game has a linear design where certain task must be completed within a certain time period 100%, then that is a poor game design. Although let us say that you only have to complete 75% of those task in order to progress then that is challenging. When Failure then happens, which will stop game progression, the player could restart play, do something different, continue on to see how many of these task are completed, then when time is up if the player obtained at least 75% (They do not have to know) then game play can continue.
Here is the catch, and challenge to the game designer / programmer... If the player needs a key to unlock the door, but did not get the key in the previous step, but did achieve an 80% completion rate to advance, you should design a system where the player can get that key later. Give the player say 3 chances to get the key.
I think if this is done, for me at least, it will not only challenge me, but keep my interest as well!
Author
What about graphics? Do they contribute to the game's fun-ness or do they not matter so much?
Before I decide to play a game, I see a lot of screenshots, gameplay videos, trailers, concept art -- in other words, the graphics. If the game doesn't look good, that can turn me off of playing it.
But once I get immersed, the graphics go away. The sprites/polygons become people, buildings, streets, what have you. Unless the art suddenly changes style or something doesn't jive with the color scheme or the graphics glitch out or some important item blends in with the background, I don't even notice.
Playing games is instinct.
From a young age people play games not just to entertain them selves, but also to improve there survival skills.
The "fun" you gain from games is your brain rewarding you for learning and improving skills.
Finding hidden things, collecting, building stuff , cooking, finding shelter, solving problems and hitting things on the head with a stick, these are just few things that games use to allow people to have fun.
Because our brain rewards us for learning these things we can often find tedious actions fun to do in games, chopping wood is hard and boring work yet people can spend a whole afternoon deforesting a minecraft map.
The more people associate a skill with daily survival the more fun it is in a game, a game about math will appeal to people who realize the value of math and would bore those who don't.
Immersion into a game is important, the more a person believes what thy are doing is real the more fun it is.
Graphics is a very important part of immersion because people trust there eyes more than any of there other senses, it is also the quickest way to immerse some one into a game.
High quality 3d graphics doesn't always mean good Immersion, this is do to the way people understand objects and movement and is similar to the "Uncanny valley" effect.
The more convincing a object is the more we notice strange behaviour.
So to summarize:
You don't need the best graphics for a game to be good, but it helps.
What makes a game fun to play is instinct and different people like different things.
Most hardcore and casual gamers have played a "hidden objects game" at some point.
For me a game is fun primarily because it makes me think a mix of interesting and pleasant thoughts. Thoughts can be inspired by story, art, and gameplay that requires strategic thought or creative problem solving.
The problem with defining 'fun' in any particular sense is that the concept is different for each individual person. One person can like shooters, another can hate them. Simply taking what the first person says at face value, and creating a simple shooter game, will only satisfy the first person.
However if you put, say, 5 people together and ask them whether they like being able to customise their character. If four people say yes, and one person says no, then being able to customise your character can be considered, in a fundamental sense, 'fun'.
This is where things start getting picky. In reality, you can define fun simply by saying 'anything the majority of people consider entertaining'. Yet that one person still finds it boring. This is where you look at two things. Who am I aiming for within my game? Once you achieve that, then you ask: what does the majority of the target audience consider entertainment?
So, for example, you decided to create a rogue-like. Your target audience is rogue-like fans, now you research what your target audience preferences in entertainment are. One of the biggest factors in a rogue-like for the fans is the variation within the randomness, the more they feel like every game is different, the more they enjoy the experience.
In reality, you'll never satisfy everyone. Just look at what you can do.
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