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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: May 2024

Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs. Zombies

May 29, 2024

Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies

May 29, 2024

Onboarding Sketchnote

May 29, 2024

Critical Play: Play Like A Feminist

May 29, 2024

In Shira Chess’s book “Play Like a Feminist”, she makes a compelling argument that feminists should engage more with video games, both as players…

Critical Play: Play Like A Feminist

May 29, 2024

Discussion Question: Should Smash Bros change female characters to better support feminist goals, or should they prioritize staying true to the original characters (many…

Florence: A Feminist Critical Play

May 29, 2024

Florence exemplifies the potential of feminist game design by focusing on the emotional labor and trials and tribulations that its female protagonist must endure…

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist – Florence

May 29, 2024

Florence, developed by Mountains and published by Annapurna Interactive, is a narrative-driven game designed for players who appreciate emotional storytelling and intimate character studies….

Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies

May 29, 2024

Play Like a Feminist – Critical Play

May 29, 2024

Playing Super Smash Bros from a feminist perspective for me involved engaging with the game’s player roster, mechanics, and representation through the lens of…

Critical Play – Doki Doki Literature Club!

May 29, 2024

Doki Doki Literature Club takes the mundane and tired tropes of typical visual novel dating sims and flips them upside-down. Fundamentally, DDLC is a…

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist by Ngoc

May 29, 2024

Introduction “Stardew Valley,” created by Eric Barone (also known as ConcernedApe) and released in 2016, is a farming simulation game designed for a broad…

Smash’s Potential for Radical Feminst Play

May 29, 2024

Content warning: images contain sexual content and gore   This week I played Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a fighting game made by Bandai Namco…

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist

May 29, 2024

One night, Hot springs  is a single-player  game made my npckc and released in 2018.  The target audience is teens and adults. The game…

Critical Play (Feminist) – Doki Doki Literature Club

May 29, 2024

Warning: Contains massive spoilers for the game. This post is intended for those who have already played the game. If you haven’t, play the…

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist

May 29, 2024

Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) is a visual novel game developed by Team Salvato, originally released in 2017. The game follows a student (controlled…

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist

May 29, 2024

For this critical play, I played the game Florence. It is an interactive story game developed by the studio Mountains and published by Annapurna…

Critical Play: Play Like A Feminist – Ethan Foster

May 29, 2024

For my critical play this week, I chose to play Doki Doki Literature Club, on macOS. Doki Doki Literature Club, developed by Team Salvato…

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist (Steve)

May 29, 2024

“Life is Strange” is a single-player episodic adventure game developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Square Enix in 2015. It takes about 14…

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist – Stardew Valley

May 29, 2024

Stardew Valley is an indie farming simulation game created by Eric Barone (ConcernedApe), first released in 2016. In the game, players inherit a run-down…

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist – One Night, Hot Springs (Oluseyi Ogundipe)

May 29, 2024

One Night, Hot Springs is a visual novel centering around a trans woman in Japan’s experience of going to the hot springs with her…

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

  • P1: Tiny playable prototype (Aiden Pinuelas, Xingyi Zhang, & Emma Wong)
  • Precision of Emotion: A New Kind of “Fun” Approach in Educational Games- Jessica
  • Sketchnote: MDAO – snoopy
  • Sketchnotes on MDAO Framework
  • P1: Introducing Serious Games – Stop Disasters!

Recent Comments

  • snoopy on Games, Design and Play: Elements – Noe Chicas-Aranda
  • 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

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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