Curious about Mental Models for designing games

I've been developing my first commercial game for about 2 years now.

Coming from a technical background as a software engineer, I quickly discovered that it's very hard to go from a vision and idea to an actual design with granular aspects to it. I ended up inventing technical challenges for me and buried my head into them.

So I've been researching a lot of game design resources and got access to a wealth of knowledge and expertise from the the game dev incubator I got into.

In the end I came up with a framework (built on those resources) that helps me when starting from a blank canvas at each design block, but also puts the context that allows the average of my decisions to be a net positive.

Yes I know it might be a different kind of procrastinating instead of actually designing and developing, but I do believe I'm in a better place, and the game is starting to come alive.

So I'm curious if a lot of people spend time on the meta of game design, and if they tried to structure it and build their own design guidelines?

If I had to summarize mine it will be grossly simplified to

What is your Gambit?

What is the human shard you're exploring? Why does it matter to you and how will it resonate with others?

What are the pillars of your idea?

What will make it fun? what is the scope? and is it viable?

The Barrels on the road

First build a toy that is fun to interact with by itself. This is the core loop that will be repeated again and again. Players should feel right at home in it, and learn to dwell on it.

Then make it a game, with the progression loop that will make the player want to come back again and again to the toy, but with new incentives and an evolving environment.

Finally verify that you delivered the experience you promised in the gambit.

Reach

Your game should be able to reach people by producing a 5s wow at the first glance. This can be done in many manners, but one obvious way is to have a genuinely authentic experience that people can project themselves into.

If they decide to play your game they should be hooked in under 5 minutes. This is the role of a well crafted toy.

Then they should be able to spend an X amount of hours. If the game is well designed, they will not leave after 5 minutes and will have a continuous desire to keep on living the experience until they feel satisfied by it.

This is just the intent layer of my framework for which I wrote different design crates (Interface, Feel, Player, etc...) to help me actually design and develop the game.

I'm yet to validate the game against a broad public reception, but the game and my design philosophy got me into an incubator, some public showings that were pretty positive and the ability to present the game in my country's pavilion in the upcoming Gamescom!

So do you relate to this framework, do you have your own, or all of this meta brain dump is a waste of time?