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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: Carina Ly

CS 247G (Spring 2022) + CS 377G (Winter 2023)

Plants vs. Zombies Onboarding

May 20, 2022

Sketchnote: Puzzles

May 14, 2022

Critical Play: Puzzles

May 13, 2022

For this critical play, I decided to play Monument Valley, a single-player puzzle game by ustwo, on the iPad. This game seems to be…

Critical Play: Mystery

May 8, 2022

For this critical play, I decided to play Her Story, a single-player interactive film video game that was by Sam Barlow, an independent game…

Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Video Games

May 8, 2022

Concept Doc: What’s The Move?

May 2, 2022

By Carina Ly, Nadin Tamer, Alisa Wang, Francesca Bottazzini, Rick Robert Synopsis It’s a been jam-packed week and you’ve been on the grind with…

Critical Play: Walking Simulator

April 30, 2022

For this critical play, I decided to play The Stanley Parable, a single-player walking simulator game by Galactic Cafe, on the Mac. While this…

Narrative Architecture Mindmap

April 29, 2022

Evocative Storytelling: Mario Kart is an example because the game uses famous characters in the Nintendo world as car racers, evoking childhood-like feelings for…

Sketchnote: Game Architecture

April 29, 2022

A game I really liked is City of Love: Paris, which is essentially an interactive drama game that chronicles the story of a girl…

Project 2 Moodboard: Escape Room

April 25, 2022

A teenage girl has gone missing and it’s up to you to find her! As a local FBI/CSI agent, you’ll be able to explore…

Sketchnote: Balancing Games: Chance and Skill

April 23, 2022

Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging, Getting Vulnerable

April 17, 2022

For this critical play, I played skribbl (by a developer with the pseudonym @ticedev on Twitter) on the web browser. Even though this game…

Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships

April 15, 2022

Visual Design of Games

April 14, 2022

Elements: Core: A table that contains two columns: one for the name of cheese/font and the other column for the player to input their…

Competitive Analysis: Jeopardy!

April 14, 2022

Jeopardy!, a popular trivia game created by Merv Griffin for a television game show, has elements similar to our trivia game Risky Quizness. Jeopardy…

What Do Prototypes Prototype?

April 11, 2022

What kinds of feelings does the game evoke? This is an important question to answer because when people play games, they have some sort…

MDA and 8 Kinds of Fun

April 11, 2022

One of my favorite games is Uno because of its wide variety of mechanics that make it all kinds of fun! To start off…

First Critical Play

April 6, 2022

For my first critical play, I played Among Us (by Innersloth) on the iPad. Even though this game is popular with a variety of…

Formal Elements MindMap

April 6, 2022

Sketchnote (4/5): What Games Are and Aren’t

April 3, 2022

Carina Ly

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

  • Critical Play: Return of the Obra Dinn
  • Critical Play: Gone Home
  • Bandicoot P2 Team Norms
  • Team Myopus Team Norms
  • Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Video Games – Trini Rogando

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
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  • SGSG

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