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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: Ymohsen

I just like cs & ethics lol

Final Class Reflection

May 31, 2022

Growing up, games were always my safe haven and an outlet for me to just disconnect from everything and get lost in a good…

Subnautica Mindmap

May 31, 2022

Perfect Partner

May 30, 2022

Perfect Partner: Developed by: Katherine Chen, Esteban Wu, Zoe Lynch, Natasha Kacharia, Delali Azamati, Yousif Mohsen     Build the Game: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JDJlGkmrMiDWvYHJY_DqzBUikuRwXC0K?usp=sharing Table of…

Balance Critical Play

May 25, 2022

The Game I’ve decided to focus on for my critical play is Teamfight Tactics. It is a game developed by Riot Games and allows…

Sketchnote for Onboarding

May 23, 2022

Critical Play: Puzzles

May 18, 2022

  The Mimic, on Roblox, is a fan-made puzzle horror game aimed to tell the story of a child who has lost their parents…

Puzzles as Games Sketchnotes

May 16, 2022

Mystery Critical Play

May 11, 2022

Life is strange is narrative mystery game developed by Dontnod Entertainment, Square Enix, Deck Nine, Feral Interactive, and Black Wing Foundation. I was able…

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

May 8, 2022

Critical Play — Dear Esther

May 4, 2022

  Dear Esther seems to be the epitome of a walking simulator as there literally is NOTHING else to do but walk. Normally, I…

Concept Doc

April 30, 2022

Team: Delali, Esteban, Katherine, Natasha, Yousif, Zoe   Directions: We want to move towards a psychological thriller choice game aiming to make a commentary…

Individual Concept Brainstorming

April 29, 2022

Playlist Link:     Three Directions Explorative Narrative: Type of Fun: Discovery/Challenge  You’re trying to escape, super creepy someone is watching you – slowly…

Narrative Architecture Mindmap

April 29, 2022

Four Examples of Narrative:   Evocative Spaces: LEGO Batman Enacting Stories: Batman: Arkham Knight Emergent Narratives: Portal 2 Embedded Narratives: Borderlands 2  

Sketch-note Game Architecture

April 29, 2022

Balancing Skill & Chance

April 24, 2022

REACT!

April 21, 2022

                  React! is a high-energy game designed for almost any large group gathering and many different…

Critical Play

April 21, 2022

The game I selected for the critical play is Cards Against Humanity. This is a card-game, created by a group of designers consisting of:…

Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships

April 17, 2022

Visual Design of Games

April 17, 2022

Core Elements of Cheese or Font: List of words Columns for types of fonts/cheeses & columns for answers separate Next & previous buttons to…

Critical Play: Competitive Analysis

April 12, 2022

  Skribbl.io reimagines the classical pictionary game in a digital format, and in doing so, provides players with many more customization and play options…

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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

  • 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

  • Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters – Ji Hong Ni
  • Sketchnote: Playtesting Alone! – Jasmine Steele
  • rise of the video game zinesters
  • Rise of the Video Game Zinesters Sketchnote
  • Sketchnote: Playtesting alone – Charlotte Feng

Recent Comments

  • sarakolb on Final Reflection Essay
  • sarakolb on P4: Refine a game
  • sarakolb on Project 3 Reflection Essay
  • sarakolb on P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
  • sarakolb on Create Project 4 Rubric

Categories

  • mindmap
  • CS247G
  • Project One
  • milestone
  • P2: Games In Space
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  • 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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