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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

Category: P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences

P3: Reflection (Stayin’ Alive)

November 22, 2025

First off, this was such a fun experience! I’m really happy with how Stayin’ Alive turned out. I think it offers a sense of…

P3: Reflection – Angela Mao

November 22, 2025

Before we started on our systems game, my main concern was making a complex game with too many rules that was going to be…

LOVEBUG – P3

November 21, 2025

Artists’ Statement Through LOVEBUG, we hope to represent the system of an email virus spreading from person to person through the actions of a…

Reflection: Working on “Stayin’ Alive”

November 21, 2025

Stayin’ Alive: A Reflection Working on Stayin’ Alive was an enlightening experience into the world of onboarding and complex systems. Although I’ve made many games…

P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences – Not On My Block

November 19, 2025

Artist’s Statement Our game ‘Not On My Block!’ represents the system of gentrification in a city neighborhood. Specifically focusing on displacement, the gameplay models…

P3: Refined Prototype (Stayin’ Alive)

November 16, 2025

In this next round of iterations, we playtested with 3 different people, and our notes on what was brought up and the changes made…

P3: Refined Prototype

November 15, 2025

Summary Overall, players enjoyed V5 of the game. They highlighted that the flexibility and room for strategic thinking gave them a stronger sense of…

Sketchnote: Game Balance

November 13, 2025

Figure 1: Sketchnote of the reading

P3: Concept Map (Stayin’ Alive)

November 12, 2025

In both of our concept maps, we focus on the same idea of an ecosystem where animals are constantly trying to gather enough resources…

Sketchnote: Playtesting Formally

November 6, 2025

Figure 1: Sketchnote of the reading

Natural Ecosystem Playtest #1

November 6, 2025

For P3, our group (Krystal, Leyth, Lucas, and Ngoc) is tasked with creating a systems game that leads to “unexpected consequences”. We decided to…

Read & Play: Working with System Dynamics

November 1, 2025

Spoilers Ahead! (Cult of the Lamb) To better understand system dynamics, I played the digital video game Cult of the Lamb on Steam ($25)…

Mindmap + Response: Working with System Dynamics – Ellie

December 15, 2024

Values, Arcs, and Loops in our P3 Game   Values Our game, Cooking Pals, puts the player in the position of a restaurateur opening…

P3: Reflection

November 25, 2024

Developing Cooking Pals proved to be much more difficult of a challenge than I initially anticipated, especially when it came to designing and modeling…

P3: Reflection – ISPS

November 24, 2024

InterStellar Postal Service was such a fun systems game to work on! Before reading about and making one, I was pretty unclear on what…

P3 Reflection – Helicopter Parent – Sam Jett

November 24, 2024

Prior to this project, I had already been a part of a team which built a systems game: Sunnyvale, CA, which modeled the system…

P3: Reflection (Khushi)

November 24, 2024

Before engaging with the P3 systems game project, I viewed systems games as complex and often daunting. My limited prior experience suggested they involved…

Cooking Pals—P3 T5

November 23, 2024

Team 5 – Gracielly Abreu, José Davila, Butch Nasser, Ellie Vela, Haven Whitney Overview/Artist’s Statement (Note that this game went through major revisions and…

ISPS: Reflection

November 23, 2024

Before playing ISPS, I expected a systems game to focus heavily on strategy and interconnectedness, where success depends on mastering mechanics and managing resources…

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…

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

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Recent Posts

  • BitCoin счета от JustForex Страница 2 Трейдинг криптовалютами Биткоин форум
  • Protected: P2 Refined Prototype — amaru
  • Protected: P2 Playtest Prototype — amaru
  • P4: It’s just a burning memory
  • Reflection Seb

Recent Comments

  • Male Monitor – Seminar Group 2 on Through the Looking Glass: Gendered Gazes in Video Games 
  • brysigg on Conclave: A Prayer Simulator — P2
  • brysigg on P2: The Empathy Machine – Angela Mao
  • brysigg on P2: The Empathy Machine
  • angmao on P2: “Blank Canvas”

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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