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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

Author: ban

Lover of all types of games, but am always down for either a digital game that hits you in the feels, or a complex system board game where your friends hate you by the end. Living proof that those who can't draw can still do well on Sketchnotes.

A Game of Schrödinger’s Humanity (RWP)

April 24, 2026

What is it that makes you human? Approached philosophically, there are numerous possible interpretations: maybe it relates to the body, and the physical manifestations…

An outline of a mirror from the game "Slay The Princess: stands in the center of the screen. In first-person POV, an taloned humanoid avian hand reaches out to the mirror. The mirror's reflection shows the hand, and a bird-like monstrous creature staring back. Captioned text states "It's You."

Monsters of the Mirror (RWP)

April 17, 2026

“He who fights with monsters should look to see that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an…

You Will Always Be at the Mercy of the Author’s Ghost (RWP)

April 10, 2026

In PWR 1, I wrote a piece titled “Here’s Why I Shun Harry Potter, and You Should Too.” To write this thinly-disguised rant, I…

CS 399 W26 Reflection — Space Game and Loose Lips

March 22, 2026

This quarter, I split my independent study units across two games: Space Game (title in progress) with Krystal, Leyth, and Lucas, and Ngoc, and…

Final Reflection Essay—377G

December 11, 2024

Coming out of 247G, I thought I had a fairly adequate grasp of what makes an effective game from my own gameplay experience, independent…

Fight Or Flight—P4

December 11, 2024

Team: Butch Nasser, Haven Whitney See this post for the prior iteration of the game! Overview For our P4, we decided to refine EndangerEd,…

Sketchnote—Precise Rules

December 2, 2024

Hi-Res Link Here!  

P3—Reflection

November 24, 2024

With Cooking Pals completed, I’ve learned a lot about scoping and analysis of a team’s strengths and weaknesses. Throughout the design process, there were…

Cooking Pals—P3 T5

November 23, 2024

Team 5 – Gracielly Abreu, José Davila, Butch Nasser, Ellie Vela, Haven Whitney Overview/Artist’s Statement (Note that this game went through major revisions and…

Sketchnote—Game Balance

November 19, 2024

Hi-Res Link Here!

Working With System Dynamics

November 12, 2024

Hi-Res Link Here! In our P3 game, we are placing worker treatment by employers, as well as worker management, as a high value for…

Playtesting Formally

November 5, 2024

P2—reflection

November 3, 2024

For my IF game, I created a game that afforded fun through narrative structure. In my game, the player experiences a strong narrative above…

Circuit City—P2

November 3, 2024

Premise/Overview Welcome to Circuit City, the safest city in the world! You play as Casey Brooker, the young prodigy Chief of Police who helped…

The Rhetoric of Video Games

October 29, 2024

(Hi-Res Link for Your Viewing Pleasure) From the article, I think the main takeaways for my game include the idea of procedural rhetoric sitting…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 17, 2024

During class, I got to playtest with two individuals. For the first playtests, I mainly had core plot elements as narrative/options for the player…

P2: Map, Premise, Project Plan

October 17, 2024

P2: Autonomous Police Bots Premise In a not-too-distant future, you live in Circuit City, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the implementation of autonomous police…

Sketchnote—Rise of the Video Game Zinesters

October 15, 2024

P1 Reflection

October 12, 2024

Creating EndangerED was informative and fulfilling. After playing Epipen Tycoon, I was initially nervous that creating a “teaching game” would require preachy lessons, or…

EndangerED—P1 T1

October 11, 2024

Team 1: Asher Hensley, Butch Nasser, Haven Whitney Overview EndangerEd is a multiplayer board game intended for 2-6 players ages 13+. Players play as…

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 – “Cube Escape: Paradox”
  • Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Sally
  • Critical Play: Mystery at the Stargazer’s Manor
  • Critical Play: Return of the Obra Dinn
  • Critical Play: Gone Home

Recent Comments

  • Jinhyo Huh on Jinhyo – Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Videogames
  • Tray Chen on P1: The Shrimp Game
  • Samantha Leventis on Maybe We Should Be Evil: Slay the Princess
  • Samantha Leventis on The Illusion of Choice: How Constraint Gives Meaning to Evil in Slay the Princess
  • Samantha Leventis on The Princess You Get Is the One You Believe In

Categories

  • Slay The Princess
  • P2: The Empathy Machine
  • Featured
  • Project One
  • milestone
  • P2: The Future We Deserve
  • mindmap
  • P1: Social Games
  • CS247G
  • Assignments
  • Lectures
  • P1: those who play, teach
  • 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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