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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 2025

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction

May 23, 2025

DISCLAIMER: I played the game on my PS5 so I dont have reference screenshots from my personal gameplay. I will search up images from…

Critical Play – Games of Chance and Addiction maya

May 23, 2025

In playing two online games, Blackjack (on the Washington Post’s platform) and Hay Day (a mobile farming simulator by Supercell), I explored how randomness…

Critical Play – Games of Chance and Addiction

May 23, 2025

Game Name: Blackjack Creator/Origin: Originated in 18th-century French casinos; now a staple in both physical and digital gambling spaces around the world. Platform: Available…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction – Mateo LF

May 23, 2025

Why Poker? Poker has always held a special place in my heart. I learned it as a child, first from my father and later…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction

May 23, 2025

For this critical play, I revisited Counter-Strike 2, developed by Valve and playable on PC. It’s a free-to-play tactical shooter that uses a live…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction

May 23, 2025

This week, I played Poker Online. The game is called 247 Free Poker, and the target audience is quite broad: anyone who likes poker…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction

May 23, 2025

In Luigi’s Picture Poker, players willing wager money, fake money thankfully, against Luigi’s poker hand in this colorful Mario-themed variation of poker, which appears…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction – Jack Morris

May 23, 2025

Response For this critical play, I decided to play Clash of Clans. Funnily enough I started playing this again like 2 weeks ago, so…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction

May 23, 2025

For this critical play, I chose to play a free online version of Poker with other friends. Poker has always intrigued me as a…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction

May 23, 2025

BlackJack The game I played was Blackjack (with comically large cards), one of the most widely played casino card games, is a textbook example…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction

May 23, 2025

This week, I played an online poker game on 247freepoker.com. Poker is a traditional card game with historical roots in games like the French…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction – Andrew

May 23, 2025

Pokemon Go, released in 2016 by Niantic and Nintendo, (with Scopely taking over from Niantic in 2025), is a live service mobile game for…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction

May 23, 2025

The game I played this week is Blackjack, a popular casino card game widely believed to have originated in 18th-century France. The goal is…

Critical Play: Games of Chance and Addiction – Lisa Ing

May 23, 2025

Hay Day is a freemium mobile game developed by Supercell for a general audience. In Hay Day, you inherit a farm to build up…

Sketchnote: Addiction by Design

May 23, 2025

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction – Eleanor

May 23, 2025

I played a game of chance: Hades II. Like the first game Hades, it is a roguelike action role-playing game developed and published by…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction – Elliott

May 23, 2025

For this week’s critical play, I played Balatro, which was developed by LocalThunk, on the Nintendo Switch. The target audience for the game is…

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction – Dorian Gulley

May 23, 2025

Background I decided to play Pokémon Go, an AR mobile game developed by Niantic in which the real world merges with the Pokémon universe….

Critical Play: Addiction by Design

May 23, 2025

Balatro is a single-player card game that combines elements of Poker and Roguelike. It was developed by LocalThunk and released on all major platforms…

Critical Play: Addiction by Design – Justin

May 23, 2025

Nobody really knows the true origins of Blackjack, a popular card game available today at most casinos. However, it is generally agreed that the…

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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  • Mind Map: Sarah
  • mindmap – jay
  • Protected: introduction – jay :)
  • Introducing Me (Reyna)
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Recent Comments

  • EvvrryyDDY2 on Critical Play: BABBDI
  • Male Monitor – Seminar Group 2 on Through the Looking Glass: Gendered Gazes in Video Games 
  • brysigg on Conclave: A Prayer Simulator — P2
  • brysigg on P2: The Empathy Machine – Angela Mao
  • brysigg on P2: The Empathy Machine

Categories

  • P2: The Empathy Machine
  • Featured
  • Project One
  • milestone
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  • mindmap
  • P1: Social Games
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  • Assignments
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  • Lectures
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  • P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
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