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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: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 15, 2025

For context, you can find my prototype that I printed in class here.  Feedback from Playtest The choices could be less obvious  Introduce some…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype notes

October 15, 2025

Text-based interaction alone got a little boring story needed to be more fleshed out (more robust decision trees) add more characters + maybe an…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture

October 15, 2025

Henry Jenkins argues that the debate between ludology (games as systems of rules) and narratology (games as stories) is misplaced. Instead of choosing sides,…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 15, 2025

The link to my first prototype can be found here. For the prototype I brought to class today, I mainly wanted to observe whether…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 15, 2025

Player got confused at one point about who was saying what and had to scroll up to reread → need to have more dialogue…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 15, 2025

Context For my P2 tiny playable prototype, I based on my game on a rabbit that has to escape from a lab facility conducting…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture – Krystal Li

October 15, 2025

For this assignment, I decided to play Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC), which is a visual novel game created by Team Salvato in 2017,…

MarielleZheng_GameDesignAsNarrativeArchitecture

October 15, 2025

Game Design as Narrative Structure Animalia Link: Animalia by Ian Michael WaddellPlatform: Twine (Choice-based)(Competition): 2018 IF Competition, 3rd place For this assignment, I played…

Read and Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture + You’re Gone [Ryan Loo]

October 15, 2025

You’re Gone Background You’re Gone, an HTML5 game authored and developed by Madison Rye Progress, is a Kinetic Novel that traces a husband’s grief…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture

October 15, 2025

For this project, I played Emily is Away (link here), a branching fiction game where you play as a student chatting with their high…

Read & Play: Narrative Architecture

October 14, 2025

Spoilers Ahead! (Before Your Eyes) To better understand narrative architecture and interactive fiction, I played Before Your Eyes on my Windows computer, a $10…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture

October 14, 2025

Part 1: Game Design as Narrative Architecture Part 2: You’re Gone I thought I had clicked into the human version, so when they started…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture

October 14, 2025

Part 1: Game Design as Narrative Architecture Notes  Intro Long conflict between games (interactive) and storytelling (narrative)—some industry experts think they represent opposites/can’t co-exist …

Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters

October 14, 2025

Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters

October 14, 2025

Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters — amaru

October 14, 2025

 

Zinester Sketchnote

October 14, 2025

Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters

October 14, 2025

Interactive Narrative Analysis of “Doki Doki Literature Club!”

October 14, 2025

Information  Name: Doki Doki Literature Club! (DDLC) Target Audience:  Disguised – Adults, visual novel enthusiasts, especially young male players interested in anime culture and…

Sketchnote Zinester

October 14, 2025

Here’s my sketchnote for the reading. Chapter 1 is on the first page, and Chapter 7 is on the second. Sketchnote Zinester – Leyth…

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

  • Critical Play: Avalon
  • Sketchnote: What Games Are and Aren’t – Carl
  • Learning to Play Closely: Bloodborne
  • Mindmap: Formal Elements – Carl
  • MDA & 8 Kinds of Fun: Bloodborne

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
  • 377G: Serious Games
  • SGSG

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