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"gamification" is a bit of a different concept from "fun".

Gamification refers to incentivizing participation; we do this currently via reputation (and Abilities to a certain extent). You get points (and unlock Abilities) the more you participate. We don't currently have any sort of badge system, which is also a gamification method.

Fun, on the other hand, isn't the same thing as gamification. Fun is an optional thing that encourages community building. People can laugh together about a silly April Fools Easter Egg (which participation in is *strictly* voluntary; you're not required to use the Konami Code whenever you access the site).

As for whether or not we want to be "serious"... that's entirely up to the individual communities. If our Electrical Engineering site wants to be an all-business, no-fun place, that's fine; that's their prerogative and the type of community they want to build there.

On the other hand, if our Judaism site wants to have a yearly silly-question time for a month, that's also perfectly acceptable. Codidact as an organization leaves that up to the original community.

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Now, another angle I want to get at is this: We're not just aiming to build another Q&A site. We want to build a *community*.

Fun events - such as contests, or Easter Eggs - help increase a feeling of belonging and community for a lot of people. It keeps people engaged and people bond over events, or meet new people while comparing high scores.  
There's a reason we call our various sites "communities"; because that's what we're trying to facilitate. And sometimes, that means lightening things up a little (especially around gloablly-recognized fun events like April Fools).

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Now, I partly agree with your main point that gamification encourages low-quality contributions just to get points or badges or whatever. That's one of the reasons that on the platform, we've been de-emphasizing reputation, to mitigate the gaming-the-system urge. I've been trying to think of alternative ways of signifying experts that doesn't encourage the same type of gamification, but so far have been coming up largely empty-handed. Any suggestions are welcome on that front.  
However, it's important to not conflate that with a fun - and entirely optional - event that lasts for all of a single day. An Easter Egg game doesn't have the same encouraging-bad-behavior aspect that gamification does; instead, it's a way of building some community culture and having a little bit of fun. If you don't want to participate, *that's totally fine* - it shouldn't affect your other participation at all.  
There's nothing wrong with not wanting to participate. But other people can just find it a fun event, and that's also fine.