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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: P1: Social Games

Scab! : Project 1

April 26, 2026

Artist’s Statement  Scab! A Game of Worker Solidarity and Betrayal is a resource-management social deduction board game for 5–6 players, where solidarity is fragile…

Team Beaver: P1 – POV

April 25, 2026

by Ananya N., Clara L., Jinhyo H., Nicole N. Artist’s Statement POV is a collaborative storytelling game for 5 to 8 players, ages 14…

P1: Gatekeeping

April 25, 2026

Team 1: Hunaida Elhassan, Violet Crow, Fiona Han, Mayowa Adesina Artist’s Statement Our game is based off one of the most unifying experiences we…

Team Moose (Thet, Hongyi, Shane, & Kalu) – Project 1: Social Mediation Game (High Rollers)

April 25, 2026

We are Team Moose, and this is High Rollers!! Trapped in a massive casino, the only way you can escape is by trying your luck!…

Sketchy Startups – CS247G P1

April 25, 2026

Artist Statement Sketchy Startups (By Leo Sui, Raina Yang, and Leyth Toubassy)  is a drawing game where players must pitch another player’s drawing to…

P1: Rock-it!

April 25, 2026

ROCK-IT! Team Members:  Elline Harrison, Elisabeth Holm, Jay Li, Kevin Nguyen Artist’s Statement: Rock-It! is a game for people who enjoy social deduction and…

Golden Ark – P1 Team Raccoon

April 25, 2026

Brooke Ballhaus, Jeffery Cai, Lily (Xinrui) Li, Sabrina Yen-Ko Artists’ Statement The earth has flooded! The mammals have built three arks in order to…

P1: The Shrimp Game

April 25, 2026

Tray Chen, Jaduk Suh, Tianze Shao, Ryan Li Artist Statement Have you ever wished that money wasn’t money, but money was shrimp instead? You…

Project 1: Emergency Response

April 24, 2026

Artist’s statement: Emergency Response is a multiplayer cooperative social game designed around teamwork, communication, and shared responsibility. The core idea of the game is…

Find the Farm – Team Robin

April 24, 2026

Artist’s statement: This game transforms Stanford’s campus into a social map and a stage for playful deduction. Players locate one another through a series…

P1: Dealbreakers

April 24, 2026

Artistic Statement: Your partner cheated on your best friend in elementary school. Your professor writes viral My Little Pony fanfic. Your therapist thinks the…

Critical Play: The Chameleon – Jinpu

April 16, 2026

The game I selected is The Chameleon, designed by Rikki Tahta and published by Big Potato Games for tabletop play. It is a party…

Critical Play: Competitive Analysis

April 15, 2026

What I love most about social deduction games like Mafia, Avalon, or Among us, is cooperating with others to figure out missing information. In…

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…

Lily – What do Prototypes Prototype?

April 9, 2026

Our game is an animal themed social deduction game where good players must complete tasks and identify evil players before they sneak enough of…

Short Exercise: What Do Prototypes Prototype?

April 9, 2026

For P1, our team wants to test a few changes to Bananagrams. My ideas focus less on pure vocabulary speed and more on teamwork,…

What do Prototypes Prototype

April 8, 2026

My team is explorinh a social deduction / resource management game that feels kind of like if Monopoly and Mafia had a baby. The…

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype?

April 8, 2026

The featured image is AI generated. My team and I have an idea for a social deduction and resource management game. The premise centers…

Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable…

April 8, 2026

I had a blast playing Avalon during Monday’s board game night. Avalon is a hidden-role social deduction board game designed by Don Eskridge for…

Potential game box cover art for a photo scavenger hunt called Snapshot

What do Prototypes Prototype- Jessica

April 8, 2026

Image generated by ChatGPT While prototypes can be made to test many elements, the most important elements in my mind at this time are…

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

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

Recent Posts

  • Critical Play: Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery
  • Longing for a Lie (RWP)
  • Individual Concept Doc P2
  • Mayowa – Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms
  • Sketchnote: Puzzles in Games, Puzzles as Games

Recent Comments

  • Jinhyo Huh on Jinhyo – Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Videogames
  • Jeffery Cai on Jinhyo – Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Videogames
  • Daniel Shen on The Dangers of Colonial Nostalgia in Bastion
  • anavib on Bokura Planet: Where Does Trust Really Come From?
  • anavib on Defining “Feeling” With the Aliens of Bokura: Planet

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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