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The Mechanics of Magic

The Mechanics of Magic

Game Design Writings by Students at Stanford taking 247G and 377G

  • Library
    • 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
    • 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

Cult Leader – P1

April 29, 2023

Welcome! In this post, you will be joining us on our journey to create the next big party game. Chapter I: Creation Introduction: We…

P1: Dynamite Duos

April 29, 2023

Created by Nicolas Caminero, Isabelle Lee, Daniel Donghun Kim, and Annabelle Wang Artist’s statement We designed Dynamite Duos to get friends and strangers of…

P1: Hot Takes

April 29, 2023

Artist’s Statement “Hot Takes” creates a space for friends to share their inner thoughts about each other while having a good laugh! Whether the…

P1: Dear Editor

April 29, 2023

Artist’s statement Dear Editor is a party game that mixes hilarious storytelling with drawing challenges. We wanted to design a game that could use storytelling…

Abstractionary: Unleash Your Abstract Artistry!

April 29, 2023

Created by Tracy Luan, Lisette Malacon, Meerim Nurlanbekova, Umar Patel Artist’s Statement Pictionary is a fun and thrilling game in which teams eagerly try…

Project 1: ~Sketchy Circumstances~

April 29, 2023

Project Group: Jake Restaino, Jamie Song, Janet Liu, Jonathan Kula Sketchy Circumstances Artist’s Statement Sketchy Circumstances is a straight-up party game with social deduction…

P1: Surviving Stanford

April 28, 2023

Designed by: Noor Fakih, Tom Shahar, and Julia Rose Chin “Surviving Stanford” was inspired by WarioWare for its short, rapid-fire microgames, so we wanted…

Capybara Clash!

April 28, 2023

Fight for glory riches oranges? Capybara Clash is a strategic team-based card game with luck-based components that seeks to provide players with an engaging,…

Print and Play : Order of the Toads

April 27, 2023

Here is a pdf of our printable materials required to play the game—the pdf is structured to be printed double-sided, so odd numbers are…

Critical Play: Competitive Analysis

April 20, 2023

Pictionary is a game that is meant to be fun for the whole family (as long as members can read and hold a pen)….

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype?

April 14, 2023

My team is developing a game surrounding AI-generated images: Chat TPG – The Prompt Guesser. One player will generate an image using AI tools,…

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype?

April 13, 2023

Are people willing to incorporate aspects of their real lives into a non-digital game? This is important because the basis of our game is…

Surviving Stanford – Concept Check

April 12, 2023

Checkpoint 1: Concept Doc CS247G P1 – Party Game   Game Title: Surviving Stanford Tag line: WarioWare-style microgames centered around Stanford students’ experiences! Name…

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
    • 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
    • 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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  • June 2022
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  • April 2022
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  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • September 2020
  • February 2017

Recent Posts

  • Stardew Valley Has Taken Over My Life
  • Final Class Reflection
  • A Long Train Ride | Project 2 Final Report | Team 20
  • Final Reflection
  • Addiction by Design

Recent Comments

  • anthonyx on RWP: 80 Days
  • uphatak on Escape ResX Print and Play
  • Dsilva on P2 Team 15 Games in Space Project: Escape ResX
  • jrest on P2 Team 15 Games in Space Project: Escape ResX
  • jrest on Escape ResX Print and Play

Categories

  • CS247G
  • P1: Social Games
  • mindmap
  • P2: The Future We Deserve
  • Project One
  • milestone
  • Assignments
  • Lectures
  • P2: Games In Space
  • Critical Play
  • Project Two
  • Sketchnotes
  • P4: Refine a Game
  • Project Four REFINE
  • From the Instructor
  • Project Two: The Future We Deserve
  • ReadWritePlay
  • Project Three: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
  • 377G: Serious Games
  • SGSG

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