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The Mechanics of Magic

The Mechanics of Magic

Game Design Writings by Students at Stanford taking 247G and 377G

  • 247G Syllabus
    • 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
  • The How and Why of Sketchnotes
  • Graphic Design Resources

Author: Nhoang

Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable…

June 2, 2022

We’re not really strangers, created by Koreen Odiney as a physical game is a get to know you game made for ages 15+. It…

Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships

June 2, 2022

Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships

Reflection – Nancy Hoang

June 2, 2022

Before this class, I thought game design was more of a focus and issue for digital video games and that the visual design of…

Sketchnote: Terror in Subnautica – Nancy Hoang

June 1, 2022

Terror in Subnautica

Is this game balanced? – Nancy Hoang

May 26, 2022

Game specs: Mafia is a social game created by Dmitry Davidoff played a generally a 10+ audience. The game consists of a group of…

Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies – Nancy

May 25, 2022

Plants vs zombies

Critical Play Puzzles

May 20, 2022

Factory Balls is a flash turned web application game that was developed by Bart Bonte. It is a single player puzzle game that targets…

The Role of Architecture in Videogames – Nancy Hoang

May 10, 2022

Sketchnote

Narrative Architecture – Nancy Hoang

May 2, 2022

Narrative Architecture Enacting Stories: Farmville Emergent Narrative: Mafia Embedded Narrative: Murder mystery escape rooms Evocative Stories: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Game  

Game Architecture – Nancy Hoang

May 2, 2022

Game Architecture

P2: Checkpoint 1

May 2, 2022

Potential storylines for escape room: 1 – Someone’s friend has gone missing for 3 weeks. You go and check up on their room and…

Balancing Games: Chance and Skill

April 26, 2022

Chance and Skill

Visual Design of Games

April 19, 2022

In this article I recreate the visual aesthetics of Cheese or Font, a guessing game where you determine if a word is a cheese…

Critical Game Play: Competitive Analysis – Truth or Dare – Nancy Hoang

April 14, 2022

For this week’s game play I decided to play Truth or Dare. As a middle school classic, it brings back memories of late night…

What do prototypes prototype? – Nancy Hoang

April 12, 2022

How hard should an obstacle be?  This is important so that players are not consistently dying and leave the game prematurely. This requires an…

MDA & 8 Kinds of Fun: Ticket to Ride – Nancy Hoang

April 12, 2022

One of my favorite games of all time is Ticket to Ride. It is a board game that involves creating paths from randomizes sources…

Inhuman Conditions – Nancy Hoang

April 7, 2022

For this project I played Inhumane Conditions which is a web application game based on a board game developed by Tommy Maranges and Cory…

Formal Elements Mind Map- Nancy Hoang

April 6, 2022

Formal elements mindmap

What games are and what they aren’t – Nancy Hoang

April 5, 2022

  I could not get the paper to be any flatter and lost all of my black pens for some reason, so I used…

Introduction – Nancy Hoang

March 30, 2022

Hi! I am Nancy. I use she/her pronouns and my favorite game is Ticket to Ride. I really like playing it because it reminds…

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

  • 247G Syllabus
    • 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
  • The How and Why of Sketchnotes
  • Graphic Design Resources

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Recent Posts

  • Jasmine Steele – P3 Reflection (Clout Chasers)
  • The Mechanic is the Message – Charlotte Feng
  • P4: Refine a Game – Lost Voices – Charlotte Feng
  • P4: Black Friday Baking (Yasmine Mitchell and Grace Zhang)
  • P4 | Accelerate

Recent Comments

  • Christina Wodtke on P2 – Barrier or Bridge?
  • Christina Wodtke on P2 – Split
  • Christina Wodtke on P2: The Last Moment of Sun
  • Christina Wodtke on P2: Zauberkurg Kartoffel Farm
  • Christina Wodtke on P2: The Future We Deserve https://mechanicsofmagic.com/?p=13253&preview=true

Categories

  • mindmap
  • 377G: Serious Games
  • P2: The Future We Deserve
  • P4: Refine a Game
  • CS247G
  • Project One
  • milestone
  • P2: Games In Space
  • Critical Play
  • Lectures
  • Sketchnotes
  • Project Two
  • From the Instructor
  • Project Four REFINE
  • Assignments
  • Project Two: The Future We Deserve
  • ReadWritePlay
  • Project Three: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
  • SGSG

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