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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

CS199: We’re Cooked (aka Cooking Game)

June 10, 2026

We’re Cooked / Cooking Game Reflection How it began “We’re Cooked” had a bit of a delay in terms of this quarter’s CS199 sprint….

CS199 Reflection – Rat King

June 10, 2026

Introduction This quarter marks the second quarter of independent study I completed for my solo game dev project, Rat King. For those unfamiliar, Rat…

Hex and The Wizard’s Codex [Ryan’s CS199 Final Reflection]

June 9, 2026

Introduction This was my first, and unfortunately last, independent study. To say that I’m only a little disappointed that I waited until my final…

CS 399 Reflection: Hotpot! – Krystal Li

June 9, 2026

My brother David and I have been thinking about a hot pot game for years. We first had the idea at a family game…

Read, Write, Play: Final Essay – Krystal Li

June 9, 2026

What Games Teach Us About Loneliness My little bug employees had been working all day. By the time I got home from school, the…

Authority and Meaning

June 8, 2026

The Narrator has been giving you instructions the entire time. First, you are denied being able to play the “real game,” and now you…

Violence, and our accepted roles

June 8, 2026

You raise your weapon, hesitate, and then fire because the game will not continue if you don’t act. The hesitation is worth sitting with….

CS399 S26 Reflection—Cooking Pals and Conclusions

June 8, 2026

This quarter, I worked on Cooking Pals with Lucas and Noé, since 1. I was still super attached to the concept that I generated in…

Framed: Agency and Manipulation in Narrative Games

June 8, 2026

You are standing at the top of a dark staircase. A voice tells you there is a princess in the cabin beneath you, that…

“The Princess Will Remember That”: Absurdism through the Content and Meaning of Video Games

June 8, 2026

Introduction In the dance “Café Müller” by the acclaimed choreographer Pina Bausch, the stage is darkened completely, besides the realistic structure of a cafe….

Grant Him the Lab Coat: On Voice, Authorship, and the Obedient Player

June 8, 2026

The experimenter wears a white lab coat. He is not unkind. When you turn to him—because the man in the next room has stopped…

The Burden of Belief

June 8, 2026

As I began playing Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald, I eagerly waited in the lobby ready to begin my journey….

The Mount Zand sequence

THE MEDIUM IS THE TRAP

June 8, 2026

One of the main traps in Bastion is the Narrator’s voice. Rucks starts talking the minute you wake up, and you trust him immediately….

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist

June 8, 2026

“What does it mean to play that game as a feminist? What critiques do you have of the game? How does it intertwine feminist…

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…

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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

  • CS199: We’re Cooked (aka Cooking Game)
  • CS199 Reflection – Rat King
  • Hex and The Wizard’s Codex [Ryan’s CS199 Final Reflection]
  • CS 399 Reflection: Hotpot! – Krystal Li
  • Read, Write, Play: Final Essay – Krystal Li

Recent Comments

  • ban on CS199 Reflection – Rat King
  • Christina Wodtke on Read, Write, Play: Final Essay – Krystal Li
  • Christina Wodtke on CS 399 Reflection: Hotpot! – Krystal Li
  • Christina Wodtke on The Wizard’s Codex: CS399 Spring 2026
  • Christina Wodtke on Shuci Final Reflection

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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