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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: April 2024

Critical Play: Secret Hilter

April 8, 2024

Secret Hilter is a unilateral competition game in which one team of Liberals competes against a team of Fascists in order to pass acts….

Among Us | Critical Play: Social Deduction

April 8, 2024

Introduction Developed and published by Innersloth, Among Us is meant for anyone trying to engage in a playful game of “Whodunnit?” with others. Listed…

MDA: Dark Souls – Oluseyi Ogundipe

April 8, 2024

  A game series that I have been recently replaying and enjoying once again is the Dark Souls series by From Soft. Dark Souls…

Critical Play: One-Night Ultimate Werewolf (Jailia)

April 8, 2024

One-Night Ultimate Werewolf (ONUW) is a fast-paced game with social deduction mechanics featuring a single-round format, the absence of a moderator, and multiple victory…

MDA: Twister – Blain Engeda

April 8, 2024

One of my favorite games to play with friends and family is Twister. Its basic mechanics consist of at least two players and a…

Critical Play: Coup – Blain Engeda

April 8, 2024

Coup is a board game (with online versions available) designed by Rikki Tahta and published by Indie Boards & Cards and La Mame Games….

Critical Play: Spyfall [Sophie Jin]

April 8, 2024

For this critical play, I played Spyfall, designed by Alexandr Ushan and published by Hobby World. Played in a group of at least 3,…

MDA: Cards Against Humanity

April 8, 2024

In Cards Against Humanity (CAH), players seek to accumulate as many black cards containing a fill-in-the-blank prompt or question by playing a white card…

MDA – Animal Crossing: New Horizons

April 8, 2024

Like many others, I played a lot of Animal Crossing: New Horizons over the pandemic. In this game, you are an island representative, working…

MDA – Score! Hero by Parthav

April 8, 2024

The mobile game Score! Hero took my middle school by storm when it launched in 2015. The game offered a very unique type of…

Screenshot of my player screen during the game. My screen shows that I am Hitler, and that my teammate is Angela

Social deduction: Secret Hitler’s Use of Probability

April 8, 2024

Secret Hitler is a social deduction game created by Max Temkin and Tommy Maranville for teenage and adult groups of players (i.e. family or…

Exercise on MDA & 8 Kinds of fun – Hades [Sophie Jin]

April 8, 2024

Hades is a rouge-like dungeon crawler available on Switch and Steam, and it’s one of my favorite games of all time. The actual gameplay,…

MDA: The Sims

April 8, 2024

  My favorite game of all time is The Sims. I started playing The Sim 3 in my childhood, graduated to The Sims 4…

MDA: Hollow Knight

April 8, 2024

One of my favorite games to play is Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight is an expansive platformer set in an interconnected world called Hallownest where…

MDA Short Response

April 8, 2024

Risk is a strategy board game, where players control troops and fight to conquer all the territories in a political map of the world….

MDA: Stardew Valley

April 8, 2024

Stardew Valley is an open-ended farm-life simulator. In this game, you inherit your grandfather’s farmland and work to build relationships with the townspeople in…

Critical Analysis Week 2: The Intricate Web of Deception and Deduction in “Secret Hitler”

April 8, 2024

Introduction “Secret Hitler” is a compelling multilateral competition, social deduction board game, created by Breaking Games. It’s inspired by the historical context of Hitler’s…

Short Exercise: MDA & 8 Kinds of Fun – Nick Hafer

April 8, 2024

Pick a game you love, and identify a set of mechanics that create a dynamic that makes a certain kind of fun for you…

MDA & 8 Kinds of Fun

April 8, 2024

A game that holds a very special place in my heart is Assassin’s Creed Unity. I could go on and on for why this…

MDA & 8 Kinds of Fun: Plants vs. Zombies

April 8, 2024

Creator: George Fan, Sound: Laura Shigihara I loved playing Plants vs. Zombies growing up. It was my go-to game because I loved the sounds…

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

  • Final CS247G Reflection
  • Critical Play on WorldBuilding: Cyberpunk’s Night City Doesn’t Have Races — It Has Lifepaths
  • Critical Play: Puzzles — EXIT: The House of Riddles
  • Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms — Cube Escape: Paradox
  • Protected: Independent Study Final Reflection

Recent Comments

  • Christina Wodtke on Personal Reflection
  • Christina Wodtke on Final Class Reflection – Nicholai K.
  • Christina Wodtke on 247G Final Class Reflection
  • Christina Wodtke on Final Class Reflection – Joseph Gu
  • Christina Wodtke on Final Class 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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