Joystick Division - Pretension +1: The Gameplay Fallacy. Thanks Joker961.
More than a few gamers believe they can see the Matrix. They'll tell you that gameplay is king and that that the other parts of games, such as plot, character, music and visual design, take a back seat to the mechanics of play. Strip away all this stuff and you'll find the pure game beneath -- one unfettered by art and plot.

And there a million games, everything from Nethack to Tetris, that seem to support this notion. Even bare-bones games can compel.

But I think the notion of gameplay is mirage, or at the very least it is being chased like one.