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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: Seamus Joseph Allen

Final Reflection

December 15, 2024

I’m a Public Policy major. I love talking about and finding new ways to communicate about policy. I also love games, and have regularly…

Sketchnote: The Mechanic is the Message

December 2, 2024

You can download my sketchnote here.

Sketchnote: Writing Precise Rules

December 2, 2024

You can download my sketchnote here.

P3 Reflection — Helicopter Parent

November 23, 2024

Helicopter Parent wasn’t the first game our group attempted to create. Our first game concept was Addendum, a game about pork barrel politics and the ways…

P3: Helicopter Parent

November 23, 2024

A game by Arnav Mehta, Grace Xu, Sam Jett, and Seamus Allen. Artist Statement  Helicopter Parent is a game about the extreme rigor parents…

Working With System Dynamics: Helicopter Parent

November 12, 2024

Our game concept is Helicopter Parent, a worker-placement game where highly-involved parents shuffle their kids from activity to activity to get them into the…

Sketchnote — Rules of Playtesting

November 5, 2024

You can download my sketchnote here.

The Future We Deserve: Trance

November 2, 2024

Overview There is something deeply dystopian about TikTok, about the scattered, overstimulating frenzy of it, about the way it turns us into rats in…

P2: Reflection

November 2, 2024

Trance was an experiment. Is it possible to adapt interactive fiction through short form video? Is it possible to tell a story by means…

Notes — The Rhetoric of Video Games

October 29, 2024

You can download my notes here. Recommendation algorithms are extremely complex. Even their engineers do not fully understand their inner workings, referring to them…

Sketchnote — Game Design as Narrative Architecture

October 22, 2024

You can download my sketchnote here.

Sketchnote — Rise of the Video Game Zinesters

October 16, 2024

You can download my sketchnote here.  

P2: Trance — Map, premise, project plan

October 16, 2024

Premise In this dystopia, our character “wants” to process the death of their brother. (Wants in quotes because doing so is painful but also…

P1 Reflection — Sunnyvale, CA

October 12, 2024

In Sunnyvale, CA, players compete to block affordable housing from their own neighborhoods while pushing for it in others. This central objective of the…

Notes — Precision of Emotion

October 7, 2024

Introducing Serious Games: PeaceMaker

September 30, 2024

This week, I played PeaceMaker by Impact Games. It covers the Israel-Palestine conflict, with the players taking on the role of either the Palestinian…

Sketchnote: MADO

September 28, 2024

You can download my sketchnote here.

Games, Design, and Play: Exercises

September 26, 2024

1. Identify the basic elements in a game of your choice (actions, goals, rules, objects, playspace, players). Dicey Dungeon Actions: Roll dice, use equipe…

A landscape photo overlooking a valley from a mountaintop in the early morning. A bright orange sunrise crests the horizon.

Final Reflection — Seamus Allen

June 9, 2024

This course has massively expanded my breadth as a designer. Coming in, I had made a few games, and picked up quite a bit…

A sketchnote using the interface of a slot machine as its structure

Sketchnote — Addiction by Design

June 5, 2024

I had fun getting a little creative with the structure here, displaying the different tactics discussed as symbols on a slot machine’s reels. Each…

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

Archives

  • November 2025
  • October 2025
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  • April 2025
  • February 2025
  • December 2024
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  • September 2024
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  • December 2023
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  • December 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

  • Read and Play: Working With System Dynamics
  • Read & Play: System Dynamics
  • Read & Play: Working With System Dynamics
  • Read and Play – Pandemic
  • Read & Play: Cult of the Lamb (Systems Games)

Recent Comments

  • LostInDesign on P2 Empathy Machine
  • LWCoding on P2: It’s just a burning memory – Tianze Shao
  • LWCoding on P2: Anchor
  • LWCoding on P2: Erosion
  • Unlocking New Levels: Challenges in Dress-Up Games - Outfits Game on Pixel Runway — Or, What Games Teach Fashion‑Tech About Joyful Retention

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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