"Metagame thinking" is really interesting. There is a definite sense in which you get inside the implementor's mind to try to figure out a game, including the b

"Metagame thinking" is really interesting. There is a definite sense in which you get inside the implementor's mind to try to figure out a game, including the balance they programmed into the game, and the shortcuts they must have taken. But there's other facets besides this description of what Thief might do. A lot of a game is aesthetics, visual details that don't affect gameplay at all. There are behavioral aesthetics as well, which can be more incremental. They don't have to interact in clever ways with gameplay. They don't have to be resistant to the player hacking the system. Small cases might be the way bystanders react. Or conversations you might overhear. The backstories of Dwarf Fortress are like this. But there is a danger you are creating a pretty but ultimately annoying facade on a very fixed system. Games that put fancy conversation in front of a store interaction aren't fooling anyone. Still, if you can invoke an emotional background to a game I think it would be meaningful even if it doesn't significantly affect the optimal gameplay.