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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: October 2025

P2: Introducing Interactive Fiction (IF)

October 18, 2025

  I have attached some notes I took from the Ingold video. I really appreciated his take on how to track states throughout the…

P2: Wild Space, Playtest #2

October 18, 2025

With more added to Wild Space, I embarked on a journey to playtest the game with others to get some initial feedback on the story…

Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters

October 18, 2025

I read Chapter 1 & Chapter 7. I sketched out some of the concepts of how video game ideas get bottlenecked by a small,…

P2: Introducing “Wild Space”

October 17, 2025

Game Overview Wild Space is a game in development of P2. The game’s tagline reads as follows: An isolationist shoots themself into space to…

Read & Play — Animalia (amaru)

October 17, 2025

This week I played Animalia, a work of Interactive Fiction (IF) designed, written, and published by Ian Michael Waddell for free on itch.io. In this game,…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture

October 17, 2025

Notes for Game Design as Narrative Architecture Two different group of gamers – the Ludologists (focus on mechanics of gameplay) and Narratologists (games +…

Game Design as Narrative Architecture – Leyth Toubassy

October 16, 2025

Leyth Toubassy – Game Design as Narrative Architecture Heres a PDF of my submission! Sorry for the weird format, I couldn’t get the images…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture by Ngoc

October 16, 2025

Game Design as Narrative Architecture Sketchnotes Game Overview and Target Audience “I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator” is a…

Game Design as Narrative Architecture

October 16, 2025

Notes on reading: Not all games are stories (Tetris) Pure systems Sensations Simulations Games go for story and borrow from narrative theory Studying stories…

P2 Tiny Prototype Notes – Leyth Toubassy

October 16, 2025

Tester: Renee – Stanford CS Coterm During Playtest: Jokingly predicted something bad would happen Liked the dog Was surprised by the twist Post Playtest…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 16, 2025

Tiny Prototype My prototype was a small segment of my game, consisting of you naming yourself, interacting with a wandering man who is interested…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture

October 16, 2025

Game Design as Narrative Architecture Sketchnote Emily is Away: Reflection Game overview & audience The game Emily is Away, created by Kyle Seeley, is…

Tiny Playable Prototype – Krystal Li

October 16, 2025

I made a tiny playable prototype for my game that transports a middle-aged divorced man named Vincent into the world of Romeo and Juliet….

Tiny Playable Prototype — amaru

October 15, 2025

For P2, I’m planning on building a dating sim/visual novel surrounding a papal conclave, in which the player takes on the role of a…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 15, 2025

Observation & Comment Observation Comment The host briefly explained the rules and the test began. The player asked if they were playing a certain…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 15, 2025

For my tiny playable prototype, I landed on the theme of rediscovering a family member’s identity after their death through their personal artifacts. I…

Tiny Playable Prototype

October 15, 2025

For my prototype, I sketched a full map of my game out on music paper, and then implemented it in inform. I spent quite…

P2: Wild Space, Playtest #1

October 15, 2025

For P2, I’m developing an interactive fiction involving dating anthropomorphic alien animals after the world has seemingly ended. Today, my game got playtested (see…

P2 Tiny Playable Prototype – [Ryan Loo]

October 15, 2025

Image: Screenshot from my tiny prototype doc.   Tiny Prototype: For my prototype, I wrote up a choice-based narrative on Google Docs and had…

P2_Tiny Playable Prototype_MarielleZheng

October 15, 2025

(my playable prototype that I used in class today) Observations: narrative fairly easy to follow; player didn’t seem to struggle to understand the narrative…

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

  • Game design pattern for making friendship sketch note
  • Sketch note – game design pattern for making friendships
  • Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships
  • Critical Play: Avalon
  • Critical Play: Avalon

Recent Comments

  • Christina Wodtke on Short Exercise: Learning to Play closely
  • Christina Wodtke on Short Exercise: Learning to Play Closely – Fruit Ninja
  • Aksel Kolasinski on Hi! I’m Mathias
  • Aksel Kolasinski on Self Introduction – Cameron H
  • Jinhyo Huh on Final Reflection – Leo Sui

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
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  • SGSG

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