Perhaps, for help with how we can do this, we can turn to father of abstract art, the Russian painter Kandinsky, and his essay Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

“A [game designer], who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own [game]. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in [games] , for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in motion. This borrowing of method by one art from another, can only be truly successful when the application of the borrowed methods is not superficial but fundamental. One art must learn first how another uses its methods, so that the methods may afterwards be applied to the borrower’s art from the beginning, and suitably. The artist must not forget that in him lies the power of true application of every method, but that that power must be developed.”

The astute amongst you may have deduced that this is not entirely Kandinsky’s original text, but instead, in the bracketed instances, I have replaced “painter” with “game designer” and “painting” with “game. Also, the emphasis is my own. However, you will notice how this does in large part, if not entirely, make a lot of sense. (via Kandinsky and Game Design « Mitu.nu)