I agree that from a designer’s point of view, the “success” of a game, either financially or critically according to whatever more highfalutin artistic criteria, is essentially random. But if we admit that Burgun’s systematic definitions don’t identify high-quality games, I’m not sure how their application will help designers make high-quality games.
In other words I think it’s much more useful to systematically determine what makes a good game rather than agonize over the systematization of identifying what a game is.