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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: Oluseyi James Ogundipe

Final Class Reflection – Oluseyi Ogundipe

June 9, 2024

I took this class as someone with a fairly decent background already in terms of games, especially video games, as I had tried to…

Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies – Oluseyi Ogundipe

May 31, 2024

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist – One Night, Hot Springs (Oluseyi Ogundipe)

May 29, 2024

One Night, Hot Springs is a visual novel centering around a trans woman in Japan’s experience of going to the hot springs with her…

Sketchnote: Puzzles in Games, Puzzles as Games – Oluseyi Ogundipe

May 24, 2024

Critical Play: Games of Chance (Mario Party Superstars) – Oluseyi Ogundipe

May 22, 2024

Mario Party Superstars is a game for the Nintendo Switch developed by NDcube and published by Nintendo. It is the 12th installment of the…

Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Videogames – Oluseyi Ogundipe

May 16, 2024

Critical Play: Puzzles – Storyteller (Oluseyi Ogundipe)

May 15, 2024

Storyteller is a puzzle game developed by Daniel Benmergui and released by Annapurna Interactive in 2023. In Storyteller, you make stories out of characters…

Sketchnote: Game Architecture – Oluseyi Ogundipe

May 9, 2024

  A game I enjoy is FTL: Faster than Light, a spaceship simulation roguelike. Since it is a roguelike, the entire game consists of…

Critical Play: Mysteries – Virginia (Oluseyi Ogundipe)

May 7, 2024

Virginia is a thriller detective walking simulator developed by Variable State and published by 505 Games. When I refer to plot and story in…

P2 Checkpoint 1: Concept Doc – Team 19

May 7, 2024

247g-checkpoint1-team-deliverable

P2 Checkpoint 1 Individual Deliverable – Oluseyi Ogundipe

May 6, 2024

  Emotions: Intrigue Wonder Satisfaction Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6C9u2LeYeN6hBAltI5F9lU?si=2a9a447262b8421e Direction 1: A samurai looking for revenge finds himself led to an ancient crypt where he believes…

Mindmap: Narrative Architecture – Oluseyi Ogundipe

May 3, 2024

Oluseyi_Ogundipe_Narrative_Architecture_Mindmap Games I’ve Loved From Each Type of Story: Evocative – Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War Enacting – Kirby Series Embedded –…

Critical Play: Walking Simulators (Year Walk) – Oluseyi

April 30, 2024

Year Walk is a first person adventure game released by Simogo in 2013 for iOS platforms. It has since been released for Windows PC,…

Critical Play: Judging and Getting Vulnerable…(Trumped Up Cards) – Oluseyi Ogundipe

April 23, 2024

Trumped Up Cards is a satirical card game developed by Reid Hoffman. The game mainly functions the same as Cards Against Humanity, but is…

Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendship – Oluseyi Ogundipe

April 18, 2024

Critical Play: Competitive Analysis (Skribl.io) – Oluseyi

April 16, 2024

skribbl.io is a free online multiplayer drawing and guessing pictionary game originally released on the Crazy Games website in February 2017. It offers a…

Sketchnote: What Games Are and Aren’t – Oluseyi Ogundipe

April 12, 2024

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype? – Oluseyi Ogundipe

April 11, 2024

Questions What type of limitations will be applied to the person or team acting out the ethical dilemma? Should every team have to use…

Critical Play: Social Deduction – Oluseyi Ogundipe

April 9, 2024

Among Us is an online social deduction game by American game studio Innersloth for Android, iOS, Windows, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox. In Among Us,…

MDA: Dark Souls – Oluseyi Ogundipe

April 8, 2024

  A game series that I have been recently replaying and enjoying once again is the Dark Souls series by From Soft. Dark Souls…

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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

  • P3: Tiny Playable Prototype
  • Playtesting formally — amaru
  • NOT ON MY BLOCK! – P3 First Playable Draft
  • Sketchnote: Playtesting formally
  • Sketchnote: Playtesting formally

Recent Comments

  • ryloo on Trial 47
  • madifan on P2: two houses – Krystal Li
  • leytht on Trial 47
  • ryloo on P2: Erosion
  • shaotz on P2: Giant Steps

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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