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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: enb

Protected: Final Class Reflection (EB)

June 9, 2024

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

EB's addiction by design sketchnote

Sketchnote: Addiction by Design (EB)

June 5, 2024
EB's sketchnote for PvZ onboarding

Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies [EB]

May 31, 2024
Peach and Toad in SSBU

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist (EB)

May 29, 2024

For this week’s Critical Play, I explored Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (SSBU), which was developed by game designer Masahiro Sakurai. The game is available…

EB's Puzzle Sketchnote

Sketchnote: Puzzles in Games, Puzzles as Games (EB)

May 24, 2024
Face-down pokemon cards in a row with one highlighted as a "good card."

Critical Play: Games of Chance (EB)

May 21, 2024

For this week’s Critical Play, I explored the opening of Pokémon TCG card packs with some friends. Individual Pokémon cards have artwork designed by…

The Puzzle Rush timer

Critical Play: Puzzles (EB)

May 15, 2024

For this week’s Critical Play, I played Chess.com’s “Puzzle Rush” and “Puzzle Battle” minigames. The games were developed by the Chess.com team, which includes…

EB's sketchnote for architecture in video games

Sketchnote: Designer’s Notebook: The Role of Architecture in Videogames (EB)

May 12, 2024
EB's sketchnote for Game architecture

Sketchnote: Game Architecture (EB)

May 10, 2024

For this week’s challenge on grouping, I used boundaries to separate the loops, chains, and arcs sections. I specifically designed the shape of these…

Critical Play: Mysteries (EB)

May 8, 2024

This week, I played Deadline, a text-based interactive fiction mystery game. Deadline was released in 1982 for older computers; I played an online port…

Checkpoint 1: Concept Doc (Team 9)

May 7, 2024

Our submission is on Google Docs (set so anyone from Stanford can comment).  

Checkpoint 1: Concept Doc Individual Deliverables (EB)

May 6, 2024

See PDF with images: eb_p2c1_individual_deliverables (1)

EB's narrative architecture mindmap.

Narrative Architecture Mindmap (EB)

May 3, 2024
Controls for Places. WASD/mouse

Critical Play: Walking Simulators (EB)

April 30, 2024

This week, I looked at some places/sketches as part of game designer ktch0’s “Places” project. These were accessed online via a desktop web browser…

Project 1: Social Mediation Game [Group 3]

April 27, 2024

Our group’s submission is on Google Docs. It’s set so that anyone with a Stanford account can comment/access. We have a lot of images…

Cards from Trumped Up Cards. One pair is heterosexual marriage being the greatest threat to America. Another pair is getting sued by your own lawyers being what Trump graduated in. The lawyer card has very small text at the bottom explaining context.

Critical Play: Judging and Getting Vulnerable (EB)

April 24, 2024

At CS 247G Game Night, my table group played Trumped up Cards (TuC), a judging game by Reid Hoffman. The game is only available…

EB's sketchnote for Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships. It focuses on Proximity, Similarity, Reciprocity, and Disclosure

Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships (EB)

April 19, 2024
The game Trial by Trolley. There are stacks of cards and a board mat featuring a train track dividing into two.

Critical Play: Competitive Analysis (EB)

April 17, 2024

This week, I attended the CS 247G Game Night where my table group had fun playing two games: Trial by Trolley (TbT) and Two…

Sketchnote: What Games Are and Aren’t (EB)

April 12, 2024

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype? (EB)

April 11, 2024

  What should the weight and scale of our game’s blocks be? The weight and scale of the blocks are important, as they will…

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

  • Final Class Reflection – Dorian Gulley
  • Final Class Reflection
  • P2: DIENO RUN
  • Final Class Reflection – Luke McFall
  • Final Class Reflection

Recent Comments

  • amaru on Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Amelia Chen
  • suyeshen on Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable – Sue Shen
  • Izzy on P2: AI Judgment Day
  • Izzy on P2: The Future We Deserve – The Broadcast
  • Izzy on P2: Pokemon The Next Adventure

Categories

  • Featured
  • Project One
  • P2: The Future We Deserve
  • milestone
  • 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
  • Sketchnotes
  • P4: Refine a Game
  • Project Two: The Future We Deserve
  • From the Instructor
  • Project Three: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
  • ReadWritePlay
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