version: 1.1

Table of contents:
-Consider other released games.
-Consider your voice and it's absence.
-Consider how you show your game
-Consider time, the universal factor

Consider other released games

Games can give powerful meaning through a player's associations. Players will interact and extract meaning out of the game's systems and let's say you want to make an incredible game for a player. Well, what hasn't the player already experienced?
You can make the most engaging beautiful game that capitalizes on feelings of power and conquest that a player who's never played an RTS genre game can have their mind blown but what about the person who's already played a lot of RTS games?
Genres allow for similar knowledge and associations to be passed from game to game and players extract so much meaning from each game but if you make a game and don't even consider what the players have already experienced you may just give them something they've already had.
It's still nice but isn't as resonating as when you can play a game with a detail no other has. 

This might frustrate and bring into question of why we love new experiences and new things so much but you can bring your own touch to a game that has never been seen before, just also consider what players have been searching for.  

Consider your voice and it's absence

The "Death Of The Author" essay speaks, to me at least, about the importance that pieces of art like games create meaning within the person who interacts. You may have a message and tone for your game that you market and tell others but

what does your game say on it's own. How could someone interpret your game?

Consider it a beauty or terror but there are infinite ways of interpreting something but you can use reactions to other games and systems to help craft what you think the game should be or really let the player decide. 

But you also can impact how your player associates your game. There may conflict in a game that expresses the need to love and help others if you in real life have stood silent to injustice. Everything in a game and in the world express something. 

Consider how you show your game

Building off the previous considerations, how you show your game is integral to how your player will associate with your game. How can you create powerful moments of discovery if you reveal to others the secrets in the game?

What the player knows about your game before playing it is part of what you can help design.
Do you want to build expectations then twist them?
Do you want to promise one thing but then deliver something else?

(If you needed your excuse to care about marketing, there it is. The way you show your game and treat others is integral to your art)

Consider time, the universal factor

We can control everything in a piece of art, except time. Consider your time AND the player's time.

Your design choices and changes to a game will take time. You need to decide what's worth to include in the game or not

The player will associate everything in your game with time. Time is inescapable. Any mechanic, any detail must consider time. Consider how long actions will take. Consider how long actions can function as anxious and how you incorporate time. Even if your game does not have specific systems regarding to time, your player will still spend time to play your game.

Make it worthwhile

Consider what players have already played, what impact you as an artist have on a game and embracing the time we and players put into art

Humans are incredible at noticing patterns inside and outside of games. Read on how I take this into account here
Here's a link to the blog's table of contents

Thank you and it was an honor to write this.

The next article is not up yet! It will be with the overhaul rework
Changelog:
May 9 2023: Changed to just redirect to patterns talk at the end of the article