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The Mechanics of Magic

The Mechanics of Magic

Game Design Writings by Students at Stanford taking 247G and 377G

  • Library
    • CS247G Community Game Design Resources
    • Game Design Resources
    • Graphic Design for Game Designers
    • Graphic Design Resources
    • Chapter 11 from Game Balance
  • Read Write Play
    • Hollow Knight: RWP 4 2023
    • Mystic Messenger: RWP 6 2023
    • Undertale: RWP 3 2023
    • What Remains of Edith Finch: RWP 5 2023
    • Catan: RWP1 2023
    • 80 Days: RWP 2 2023
  • 247G Syllabus
    • The Formal Elements of Game Design
    • Design for Play | Week One | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week One | Lecture B
    • Design for Play | Week Two | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week Two | Lecture B
    • Design for Play | Week Three | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week Three | Lecture B
    • Design For Play | Week Four | Section A
    • Design For Play | Week Four | Section B
    • Design for Play | Week Five | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 5 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 6 | Class A (no class)
    • Design for Play | Week 6 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 7 | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 7 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 8 | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 8 | Lecture B
  • Serious Play Study Group Overview
    • Study Group Week by Week Breakdown
      • Formal Elements of Games
      • Final Reflection Essay
    • [Optional Material] What is fun?
    • Project 1: Those Who Play, Teach
      • READING Visual Design of Board Games
      • Pitch Your Teaching Game
      • Sketchnote: Playtesting Boardgames
      • Sketchnote: Erin Hoffman // Wind, Not Sand: Mapping Dynamic Emotion Across a Product Landscape
      • SketchNote: MDAO
      • Critical Play: Write up your game of FLUXX
      • [Optional Material] Playtesting
      • OPTIONAL Board Game Usability
    • P2: The Future We Deserve
      • Critical Play: A Mechanic and a Story to Tell
      • Interactive Fiction: Tiny Playable Prototype
      • Introducing Interactive Fiction
      • Map and Premise
      • Critical Play: Story AND Storytelling games
      • Essay or Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters
      • Sketchnote: Art of game design- Story
      • [Optional Material] Emergence and Progression
      • Essay or Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters
      • Project 2 Reflection Essay
      • Share what you Learned: Writing Excuses Podcast
      • Values at Play & P2 Peer Grading
    • P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
      • P3 Concept Doc
      • Playable prototype
      • Working With System Dynamics (mindmap the reading, apply it to your game)
      • Mapping Systems
      • Sketchnote/Response for Rules & Tutorials
      • Project 3 Check-in
      • Project 3 Reflection Essay
    • P4: Refine a game
      • Sketchnote/Response for Playtesting with Strangers
      • Read: Mechanic is the Magic
  • On Sketchnotes
  • Printing at Stanford

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist – Kai Ssempa

June 17, 2025

Shira Chess’s “Play Like a Feminist” invites us to see games through a feminist lens, not just in terms of representation, but in how…

Critical Play: Games of Chance and Addiction – Kai Ssempa

June 17, 2025

Back in high school, my brother and I used to play this game called Clash Royale. It’s made by a company called Supercell. It’s…

Critical Play: World Building – Kai Ssempa

June 17, 2025

I downloaded Celeste on my Switch a couple years ago! I loved being able to dive back into it for this assignment. Celeste is…

Critical Play: Puzzles – Kai Ssempa

June 17, 2025

I played Monument Valley, a puzzle game developed by indie game studio Ustwo Games for iOS and Android. Interestingly enough, it was developed using…

Pixel Runway — Or, What Games Teach Fashion‑Tech About Joyful Retention

June 17, 2025

The Catwalk in My Pocket I never expected a frantic Roblox session to reshape my thoughts on the future of fashion retail. Yet the…

Colonel Sanders – Week 9/10 Post for RWP

June 16, 2025

Colonel Sanders Dating Sim was an unputdownable game for me. Even in the midst of finals, with the bleariest of eyes and running on…

Onboarding and StarCraft 2 – Justin

June 16, 2025

I was warned that I would “bounce off” a game like StarCraft 2. By “bounce off,” I think people meant that I would try…

You’re doing gamification the wrong way

June 16, 2025

I approach the end of my senior year at Stanford — a year during which I enrolled in the bulk of my Human-Computer Interaction…

Critical play- Theming Games

June 13, 2025

Games:  Angry Birds- Rovio Entertainment, avaliable on mobile platforms (iOS, Android) Cut the Rope- ZeptoLab, available on mobile platforms (iOS, Android) Cut the Rope…

Critical Play – Storyteller

June 13, 2025

The puzzle game I decided to play for the critical play was Storyteller! I’d seen clips of it on Tiktok and other platforms, so…

Sketchnote- Game Design Patterns for Building Freindships

June 13, 2025

Coziness and Juiciness in Games: An Intersectional Comparison of World of Goo and Slime Rancher – RWP Spring 2025 Final Paper, Varsha Saravanan

June 13, 2025

Coziness and Juiciness in Games: An Intersectional Comparison of World of Goo and Slime Rancher As a non competitive game enthusiast, playing games goes…

Sketchnote- Architecture in Videogames

June 13, 2025

Read, Write, Play: Starcraft 2 – Varsha

June 12, 2025

Playing StarCraft as my first real-time strategy game was an intense and overwhelming experience. I went in knowing it might be challenging, but I…

Coziness and Slime Rancher – Justin

June 12, 2025

There is a “Cozy genre” of games, led by the likes of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, which are adorable little games with a soft, gentle, and…

Idle Games and Cookie Clicker – Justin

June 11, 2025

Many times, games subvert our expectations about what a game is supposed to be. First-person shooters are often regarded as toxic, rage-inducing environments, and…

The Wizard’s Codex: CS399 Project

June 11, 2025

This quarter I started building an AI TTRPG Game Master, which I have been tentatively calling “The Wizard’s Codex”. In this post I’ll talk…

Final Class Reflection (Kelly Bonilla Guzmán)

June 11, 2025

Before this class, I thought about game design exactly how we immediately learned that we shouldn’t think about game design, starting from the mechanics…

[Extra Credit] Mindmap: Cursed Problems (Kelly Bonilla Guzmán)

June 11, 2025

Sketchnote: Puzzles in Games, Puzzles as Games (Kelly Bonilla Guzmán)

June 11, 2025

Posts pagination

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Welcome to the Stanford HCI Game Design Blog.

Currently this blog holds two formal classes being taught by Christina Wodtke as well as Independent Study Work. In winter of 2022, cs377g was cancelled because of covid-19 uncertainty, and became a study group. You can follow along by looking at the SGSG syllabus and weekly break down.

CS 247G: Design for Play(SYMSYS 195G)

A project-based course that builds on the introduction to design in CS147 by focusing on advanced methods and tools for research, prototyping, and user interface design. Studio based format with intensive coaching and iteration to prepare students for tackling real world design problems. This course takes place entirely in studios; please plan on attending every studio to take this class. The focus of CS247g is an introduction to theory and practice of the design of games. We will make digital and paper games, do rapid iteration and run user research studies appropriate to game design. This class has multiple short projects, allowing us to cover a variety of genres, from narrative to pure strategy. Prerequisites: 147 or equivalent background.

CS 377G: Designing Serious Games

Over the last few years we have seen the rise of "serious games" to promote understanding of complex social and ecological challenges, and to create passion for solving them. This project-based course provides an introduction to game design principals while applying them to games that teach. Run as a hands-on studio class, students will design and prototype games for social change and civic engagement. We will learn the fundamentals of games design via lecture and extensive reading in order to make effective games to explore issues facing society today. The course culminates in an end-of- quarter open house to showcase our games. Prerequisite: CS147 or equivalent. 247G recommended, but not required.

SGSG: Serious Games Study Group

  • Library
    • CS247G Community Game Design Resources
    • Game Design Resources
    • Graphic Design for Game Designers
    • Graphic Design Resources
    • Chapter 11 from Game Balance
  • Read Write Play
    • Hollow Knight: RWP 4 2023
    • Mystic Messenger: RWP 6 2023
    • Undertale: RWP 3 2023
    • What Remains of Edith Finch: RWP 5 2023
    • Catan: RWP1 2023
    • 80 Days: RWP 2 2023
  • 247G Syllabus
    • The Formal Elements of Game Design
    • Design for Play | Week One | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week One | Lecture B
    • Design for Play | Week Two | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week Two | Lecture B
    • Design for Play | Week Three | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week Three | Lecture B
    • Design For Play | Week Four | Section A
    • Design For Play | Week Four | Section B
    • Design for Play | Week Five | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 5 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 6 | Class A (no class)
    • Design for Play | Week 6 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 7 | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 7 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 8 | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 8 | Lecture B
  • Serious Play Study Group Overview
    • Study Group Week by Week Breakdown
      • Formal Elements of Games
      • Final Reflection Essay
    • [Optional Material] What is fun?
    • Project 1: Those Who Play, Teach
      • READING Visual Design of Board Games
      • Pitch Your Teaching Game
      • Sketchnote: Playtesting Boardgames
      • Sketchnote: Erin Hoffman // Wind, Not Sand: Mapping Dynamic Emotion Across a Product Landscape
      • SketchNote: MDAO
      • Critical Play: Write up your game of FLUXX
      • [Optional Material] Playtesting
      • OPTIONAL Board Game Usability
    • P2: The Future We Deserve
      • Critical Play: A Mechanic and a Story to Tell
      • Interactive Fiction: Tiny Playable Prototype
      • Introducing Interactive Fiction
      • Map and Premise
      • Critical Play: Story AND Storytelling games
      • Essay or Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters
      • Sketchnote: Art of game design- Story
      • [Optional Material] Emergence and Progression
      • Essay or Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters
      • Project 2 Reflection Essay
      • Share what you Learned: Writing Excuses Podcast
      • Values at Play & P2 Peer Grading
    • P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
      • P3 Concept Doc
      • Playable prototype
      • Working With System Dynamics (mindmap the reading, apply it to your game)
      • Mapping Systems
      • Sketchnote/Response for Rules & Tutorials
      • Project 3 Check-in
      • Project 3 Reflection Essay
    • P4: Refine a game
      • Sketchnote/Response for Playtesting with Strangers
      • Read: Mechanic is the Magic
  • On Sketchnotes
  • Printing at Stanford

Archives

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Recent Posts

  • Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist – Kai Ssempa
  • Critical Play: Games of Chance and Addiction – Kai Ssempa
  • Critical Play: World Building – Kai Ssempa
  • Critical Play: Puzzles – Kai Ssempa
  • Pixel Runway — Or, What Games Teach Fashion‑Tech About Joyful Retention

Recent Comments

  • Christina Wodtke on Read, Write, Play: Starcraft 2 – Varsha
  • Christina Wodtke on Reflection Seb
  • Christina Wodtke on Final Class Reflection – Mateo LF
  • Christina Wodtke on Final Class Reflection – Thu
  • Christina Wodtke on Final Class Reflection

Categories

  • Featured
  • Project One
  • P2: The Future We Deserve
  • milestone
  • mindmap
  • P1: Social Games
  • CS247G
  • Assignments
  • P1: those who play, teach
  • Lectures
  • P2: Games In Space
  • Critical Play
  • P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
  • Project Two
  • Project Four REFINE
  • Sketchnotes
  • P4: Refine a Game
  • Project Two: The Future We Deserve
  • From the Instructor
  • Project Three: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
  • ReadWritePlay
  • 377G: Serious Games
  • SGSG

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