If I had to name one quality that best encapsulates everything I care about in game-design, it would be elegance. I want my games to be simple, sleek, and sophisticated. I want them to be easy to learn and quick to play. And yet I want them to be deep, juicy, and organic, rather than shallow, dry, and mechanical.
These words are suggestive, but not particularly precise. I'd like to break down these concepts into more technical terms. To that end, I've come up with a list of nine fundamental game design qualities that I care about.
I define each of these terms in a technical and sometimes idiosyncratic way. I've tried to avoid overlap among the various concepts, which is why some of my definitions are more narrow than you might expect.
I believe that it's possible to compare two game-rules or two sets of game-rules and make a relatively objective determination about which is more simple, or more consistent, etc. However, each individual designer will feel differently about what level of simplicity or consistency is "acceptable" or "unacceptable" in any given situation. To a great extent, these subjective judgments are what constitute a designer's style.
The following qualities are suspiciously absent from the above list. Depending on how you look at it, they're either the most important qualities that a game can have, or the least important.