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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: Ryan Li

Ryan Li, Critical Play: Worldbuilding

May 15, 2026

Hades is a roguelike RPG developed and published by Supergiant Games. It was released on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5, as well as…

Ryan Li, Critical Play: Puzzles

May 8, 2026

Monument Valley is a fantastical and, dare I say, whimsical puzzle-based player-versus-architecture game developed by Ustwo Games and made for ages 4+. I believe…

Ryan Li, Sketchnote: Puzzles in Games, Puzzles as Games

May 6, 2026

My fourth sketchnote! Google drive link.

Ryan Li, Individual Concept Doc

May 5, 2026

Moodboard Playlist I wanted the vibe of songs that one would hear in a convenience store which includes 2000s pop and Midwestern emo, both…

Ryan Li, Critical Play: Mysteries and Escape Rooms

May 1, 2026

I played Tiny Rooms Story Mystery, a singleplayer game on the iOS App Store developed by Kiary Games for sleuths and detectives aged 9+….

Team Rakali, Checkpoint 0: Team Norms

April 30, 2026

1. Meet twice a week 2. Have group discussions over important things and communicate often in group chat 3. 5-10 minute grace period for…

Ryan Li, Sketchnote: Designer’s Notebook: The Role of Architecture in Video Games

April 27, 2026

My third sketchnote! (Attempted the challenge.) Google drive link.

Ryan Li, Critical Play: Walking Simulators

April 24, 2026

(The first jumpscare in this game made me pee my pants a little. It was more of a walking-in-shame-to-the-bathroom simulator.) Year Walk is a…

Ryan Li, Mindmap: Narrative Architecture

April 22, 2026

My second mindmap! Google Drive link. Favorite games are boxed in my mindmap, but just in case: Evocative Space: LEGO Star Wars Complete Sage…

Ryan Li, Critical Play: Competitive Analysis

April 17, 2026

I played One Night Ultimate Werewolf, a modded, fast-paced Mafia-based social deduction game designed by Ted Alspach and Akihisa Okui and published by Bezier…

Ryan Li, Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships

April 15, 2026

My second sketchnote! Google drive link.

Ryan Li, Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype?

April 10, 2026

Our team is working on “The Shrimp Game,” which is a social deduction game similar to Duck Duck Goose. We plan to implement some…

Ryan Li, Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable…

April 10, 2026

I played the Jackbox Party Pack, specifically Drawful and Fibbage, with my friends back home, and it was nice to catch up with them…

Ryan Li, Sketchnote: What Games Are and Aren’t

April 8, 2026

My first sketchnote! Google drive link.

Ryan Li, MDA & 8 Kinds of Fun

April 6, 2026

I really loved Path of Exile and logged a couple hundred hours on it during Winter Break 2023. It has a lot of really…

Ryan Li, Mindmap: Formal Elements

April 2, 2026

Here is the mindmap I created based off the short video series we were assigned on the formal elements of game design. I followed…

Introduction

March 31, 2026

Hi everyone! I’m Ryan (he/him) and I’m a sophomore from the Chicago suburbs studying CS and English. My favorite game of all time is…

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

  • May 2026
  • April 2026
  • March 2026
  • December 2025
  • November 2025
  • October 2025
  • September 2025
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  • February 2025
  • December 2024
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  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
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  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
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  • August 2022
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  • June 2022
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  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • September 2020
  • February 2017

Recent Posts

  • Sketchnote: Addiction by Design
  • Critical Play: A Dark Room
  • Critical Play: A Dark Room
  • Sketchnote: Addiction by Design – Mai
  • Addiction Sketchnote

Recent Comments

  • Christina Wodtke on Critical Play: Cartographers
  • Aanika Atluri on RWP Week 5: A Short Hike and Wandering Games
  • Aanika Atluri on A Short Hike: Why Wander?
  • Aanika Atluri on A Short Hike, A Long Distraction
  • Jay on Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendship

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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