What do I think gameplay is?

Gameplay prior to reading the post on blackboard I thought, it was simply the way the game played, like with first person shooters and racers etc all these genres defined by their related game play elements, but now I’m thinking its more than that, of course it refers to how the game plays but the experience playing the game would imo count as gameplay, it’s more of a convergence of the several factors of playing a game from the controls to the style to how you do anything in the game. Although I might be wrong but for the sake of this blog assume I’m RIGHT >D well not really, just hop aboard onto my train of thought.
An example of where I thought I had an experience of good game play is oddly Tony Hawks Pro Skater Underground, a game which is amazingly addictive, it was the first tony hawk game to incorporate a story and still retaining that good ol control system, I spent hours on this feeling like a pro skater even though in reality I’ve only ever owned one skateboard, I never rode it for longer than two minutes and broke it while trying to climb into my locked house and while the story wasn’t amazing it did give me the incentive to beat the rival and become the ultimate skater! But my point here is that, the game is a sequel that uses elements to produce good gameplay, thus what i’m saying is that good gameplay isn’t the product of a random factors put together on the hope that it makes a good game, this game while random as heck wasn’t the result of randomosity.
Of course while I say that gameplay is the entire experience, I still use it in the context that it can relate to certain elements of a game like with first person shooters, I would call the whole setup with the gun in the view of the player and of course aspects such as reloading, gameplay elements of a first person shooter, and racers with their accelerate button, brake button etc.