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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

Month: June 2023

Final reflection + Thank you note!

June 15, 2023

First of all, I am so sorry about the terribly later reflection, but I did really want to say thank you to Christina and…

What’s Cookin’ Good Lookin’: Overcooked

June 15, 2023

rating: 8/10   I was first introduced to Overcooked junior year of high school from a friend who was playing it on their Nintendo…

What Remains of Edith Finch

June 15, 2023

What Remains of Edith Finch   Rating: 6.5/10   I played What Remains of Edith Finch earlier this quarter. For those who aren’t familiar…

Overcooked: Cooking Madness!

June 15, 2023

★★★★★★★★★★ [10/10 stars] Growing up, I always loved playing cooking games, such as Cooking Mama, Papa’s Cupcakeria, or Cooking Fever. Something about the art…

Mystic Messenger: Call me the Rizzler… or Not.

June 15, 2023

★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ [6/10 stars] With the real time component, I decided to start the game on Monday. While I had heard about the characters from…

Edith Finch: Immersion within Story-Based Games

June 15, 2023

★★★★★★★✰✰✰ [7/10 stars] Recently, I was able to play “What Remains of Edith Finch,” a narrative-driven adventure game where players follow Edith Finch, the…

Character Choice and Playstyle in Smash

June 14, 2023

Note: This is the script for what I hope will be made into a video-essay style format, which is still in progress! Character and…

RWP: Experimental Games

June 14, 2023

I wasn’t able to play the proposed games myself but I watched walkthroughs of them. I first watched a no-commentary walkthrough of 2:22 am,…

Procedural Music in Games as a Dynamic Communication Pipeline

June 14, 2023

I took some liberties by making a video essay/blog/podcast instead of a written essay — since I was going to be talking about music…

Video Games in Industry: Analyzing Business Models and Techniques for Game Profitability & Success using Undertale as Case Study

June 13, 2023

Introduction From board games dating thousands of years ago like Go or Chess to more modern games like League of Legends, it is without…

How Undertale Pays Homage to Earthbound and the Mother Series

June 13, 2023

Introduction   In this paper, I explore ways in which the RPG game Undertale (Fox, 2015) pays homage to the Mother Series, particularly Earthbound…

Final Class Reflection

June 13, 2023

I had taken a class on play before and so wrongly I came into this class thinking I knew what there was to know…

Final Class Reflection (Julia Rose)

June 12, 2023

First off, an apology about how late this reflection is. I’ve been turning the prompt in my head all week, and I feel like…

Final Reflection

June 11, 2023

Before enrolling in 247G, play and game design were concepts that felt foreign and unapproachable to me. I was so repulsed at the idea…

Final Class Reflection

June 10, 2023

When I was younger, I used to love playing video games; I would spend hours playing Pokemon, Super Smash Bros, Assassin’s Creed, League of…

Final reflection

June 10, 2023

I really loved this class!! I only really started playing games avidly last year, and this class is what solidified my love for them….

Final Class Reflection

June 10, 2023

Before this class, I didn’t know there could be theories for game design. I didn’t think about the architectures, types of fun, or any…

final reflection

June 10, 2023

I really like games. Making tons of weird games on scratch as a kid is what got me into programming and my whole life…

RWP: Mystic Messenger

June 10, 2023

Mystic Messenger (KR: 수상한메신저) is a South Korean otome dating sim game where a female protagonist downloads a mysterious app that takes her to…

final reflections

June 10, 2023

Taking this class has been a really fruitful experience, expanding my understanding of play and game design and making me so much more interested…

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

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Recent Posts

  • Sketchnote: Loops & Arcs – Ilaria
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  • Sketchnote: Loops & Arcs – Elliott
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  • Loops and Arcs Sketchnote — Tommy

Recent Comments

  • amaru on Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Amelia Chen
  • suyeshen on Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable – Sue Shen
  • Izzy on P2: AI Judgment Day
  • Izzy on P2: The Future We Deserve – The Broadcast
  • Izzy on P2: Pokemon The Next Adventure

Categories

  • Featured
  • Project One
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  • 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
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