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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

Team Beaver: P1 – POV

April 25, 2026

by Ananya N., Clara L., Jinhyo H., Nicole N. Artist’s Statement POV is a collaborative storytelling game for 5 to 8 players, ages 14…

P1: Gatekeeping

April 25, 2026

Team 1: Hunaida Elhassan, Violet Crow, Fiona Han, Mayowa Adesina Artist’s Statement Our game is based off one of the most unifying experiences we…

Team Moose (Thet, Hongyi, Shane, & Kalu) – Project 1: Social Mediation Game (High Rollers)

April 25, 2026

We are Team Moose, and this is High Rollers!! Trapped in a massive casino, the only way you can escape is by trying your luck!…

Sketchy Startups – CS247G P1

April 25, 2026

Artist Statement Sketchy Startups (By Leo Sui, Raina Yang, and Leyth Toubassy)  is a drawing game where players must pitch another player’s drawing to…

P1: Rock-it!

April 25, 2026

ROCK-IT! Team Members:  Elline Harrison, Elisabeth Holm, Jay Li, Kevin Nguyen Artist’s Statement: Rock-It! is a game for people who enjoy social deduction and…

Golden Ark – P1 Team Raccoon

April 25, 2026

Brooke Ballhaus, Jeffery Cai, Lily (Xinrui) Li, Sabrina Yen-Ko Artists’ Statement The earth has flooded! The mammals have built three arks in order to…

Project 1: Séance

April 25, 2026

Team Meerkat: Akary Buenrostro, Justin Hall, Reyna Duffy, Sally Wang Artist Statement Séance is a 6 player murder mystery, social deduction game with many…

Walking Simulator: Journey

April 25, 2026

Before diving into the exploration of Journey, I was a bit reluctant to continue playing the game as the genre is not of my…

Shuci Critical Play: Walking Sim Gone Home

April 25, 2026

Gone Home is a first-person walking simulator developed and published by The Fullbright Company for PC and console platforms. I imagine the target audience…

Leo Sui – Role of Architecture in Video Games

April 25, 2026

P1: The Shrimp Game

April 25, 2026

Tray Chen, Jaduk Suh, Tianze Shao, Ryan Li Artist Statement Have you ever wished that money wasn’t money, but money was shrimp instead? You…

P1 – On Display

April 25, 2026

On Display – CS247G Team Bilby Aanika Atluri, Matthew Cortez, & Sarah Park April 25th, 2026 Artist Statement On Display is a drawing and…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

April 25, 2026

Virginia is a short narrative mystery game by Variable State that I finished in a weekend. It’s available on Steam for $10 (also on…

Project 1: Collective

April 25, 2026

Artists’ Statement  Collective is a social deduction game about the quiet violence of money in democratic life. Six to ten players share a single…

Critical Play

April 25, 2026

For my Critical Play, I chose to write about Dear Esther. In Dear Esther, walking is critical to telling the story. The story is…

Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Videogames

April 25, 2026

Project 1: Blindspot

April 24, 2026

Artist’s Statement Blind Spot is a social improv game about talking, reacting, and trying not to mess up under pressure!  At its core, the…

Project 1: Emergency Response

April 24, 2026

Artist’s statement: Emergency Response is a multiplayer cooperative social game designed around teamwork, communication, and shared responsibility. The core idea of the game is…

Critical Play: Tiny Rooms- Jessica

April 24, 2026

As I played Tiny Rooms, a free mobile game, I was struck with just how much having a freemium or a pay to play…

Critical Play: Walking Simulators — A Short Hike

April 24, 2026

[Spoilers Warning! Key details about A Short Hike’s plot are shared below] I played A Short Hike by Adam Robinson-Yu on MacOS. The game…

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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

  • April 2026
  • March 2026
  • December 2025
  • November 2025
  • October 2025
  • September 2025
  • June 2025
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  • February 2025
  • December 2024
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  • April 2024
  • December 2023
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  • January 2023
  • December 2022
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  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • September 2020
  • February 2017

Recent Posts

  • Team Beaver: P1 – POV
  • P1: Gatekeeping
  • Team Moose (Thet, Hongyi, Shane, & Kalu) – Project 1: Social Mediation Game (High Rollers)
  • Sketchy Startups – CS247G P1
  • P1: Rock-it!

Recent Comments

  • Ryan Li on P1: The Shrimp Game
  • ban on Defining “Feeling” With the Aliens of Bokura: Planet
  • Christina Wodtke on Critical Play: Competitive Analysis (Incan Gold)
  • ban on Monsters of the Mirror (RWP)
  • ban on Absurdity in Slay the Princess: An Essay on Violent Contrasts

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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