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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: Competitive Analysis

June 8, 2026

“How does the game compare and contrast with your team’s concept?” High Stakes: https://krystman.itch.io/high-stakes During this week, I was working on my first team…

Critical Play: Walking Simulators

June 8, 2026

“How does walking tell the story?”   Journey: App store on my IPad    For this week’s critical play, I chose to purchase Journey…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

June 8, 2026

“How is narrative woven into the mystery through its mechanics? How does the architecture of the setting control the story?”   Life is Strange:…

The System Cannot Stop Us Caring — Moral Responsibility in Games

June 8, 2026

I had been playing Papers, Please long enough that I stopped seeing the people in line as people. Deep in rhythm, I’d check the…

The Wizard’s Codex: CS399 Spring 2026

June 7, 2026

Where We Left Off A year ago I wrote about the start of this project as a gut feeling, a sailor smelling land long…

The Politics of Progress

June 7, 2026

A slip of paper should not be able to change your conscience. Yet, in “Papers, Please”, I found that it does. The start of…

Game Studies Have Never Been Woke

June 7, 2026

Featured image: Ritual of the Moon screenshot. Are games just games? It is hard to ask the question without evoking the charged politics of…

Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies

June 7, 2026

CS199 Reflection: Cooking Pals and Animals on Wheels – Noe Chicas

June 6, 2026

This quarter, I worked on Cooking Pals with Lucas and Butch a new rhythm platformer project with Lucas, currently called Animals on Wheels. Across…

Final Class Reflection

June 6, 2026

Before taking this course, I thought game design was primarily a technical and aesthetic challenge: make the screen look great, make the protagonist powerful,…

Final Reflection

June 6, 2026

Before 247G, I thought about games solely from the perspective of a player. I often described games to my friends as either a definate…

P2: RECURSED

June 6, 2026

RECURSED Team Bandicoot Members:  Elline Harrison, Jay Li, Kevin Nguyen, Kalu Obasi, Shuci Zhang Artist’s Statement: RECURSED is a single-player 2D platformer where you…

Final Reflection – Leo Sui

June 6, 2026

I started getting into game design this past winter with a solo game dev project. I told myself the reason I decided to work…

ENTITEA – P2 PHOTOS

June 6, 2026

(Posting this late, so this is not part of our official submission! @TAs/Noe, there are spoilers in the photos that change the experience of…

Final Class Reflection – Hunaida Elhassan

June 6, 2026

Before this class, I thought about games mostly as something people played for fun. I obviously knew that games took a lot of work…

ENTITEA – P2

June 5, 2026

 

Mayowa – Final Class Reflection

June 5, 2026

When I was younger, I used to love playing games: I found so much connection from forcing my friends to text me on Pictochat…

Ryan Li, Final Class Reflection

June 5, 2026

Like most people, I grew up around games. Some of my earliest memories are playing Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga in my living…

P2: Level Design and Architecture

June 5, 2026

AXE BACK Tagline: Marcus has been missing for four days. The Stanford Prison Experiment never ended. Team: Bathyergus — Agam, Graham, Ji Qi, Luca…

Final Class Reflection — Sabrina Y

June 5, 2026

247G has been a class I knew I wanted to take since I came to Stanford. Before this class, I knew I loved making…

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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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  • January 2022
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • September 2020
  • February 2017

Recent Posts

  • Critical Play: Competitive Analysis
  • Critical Play: Walking Simulators
  • Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms
  • The System Cannot Stop Us Caring — Moral Responsibility in Games
  • The Wizard’s Codex: CS399 Spring 2026

Recent Comments

  • Christina Wodtke on Final Class Reflection
  • Christina Wodtke on Final Class Reflection – Luca
  • Christina Wodtke on Clara Lu CS247G Final Reflection
  • Christina Wodtke on Ryan Li, Final Class Reflection
  • Christina Wodtke on Final Day Reflection – What I Learned in 247G

Categories

  • P2: The Empathy Machine
  • Featured
  • Project One
  • milestone
  • P2: The Future We Deserve
  • 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
  • P4: Refine a Game
  • Sketchnotes
  • 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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