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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

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype? – Clare

April 10, 2025

Q1: Is my prototype equally accessible for people who are familiar with the origin games and those who have never heard of these games…

Short Exercise: What Do Prototypes Prototype? – Shang

April 10, 2025

Background: We are designing a game that involves players guessing each other’s relationships in a social network. 1. How to reveal partial information during…

Joaquin – Critical Play 1: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable – Cards Against Humanity

April 9, 2025

Cards Against Humanity is an iconic party judging game that encourages players to fill in blanks with cards from their hands to make the…

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype? – Jack Morris

April 9, 2025

Questions: How easy is the game to learn? This is important as we need to know if the amount of rules causes sensory overload…

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype?- Abbie Maemoto

April 9, 2025

Potential Game Idea: Word Rush (a word association, team-based dueling game) Question 1: How quickly are players able to understand the rules of the…

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype?

April 9, 2025

How do players engage with the concept of collaborative storytelling and improv? This question helps determine whether players are naturally inclined to contribute to…

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype?

April 8, 2025

To what extent does our prototype encourage social connection? This is an important question to answer because we think it is really important that…

Project 1: Social Mediation Game [Group 3]

April 27, 2024

Our group’s submission is on Google Docs. It’s set so that anyone with a Stanford account can comment/access. We have a lot of images…

P1: PIZZA PIZZAZZ

April 27, 2024

Artist’s Statement Pizza Pizzaz is an exciting card game designed for 2-6 players aged 10 and up. This game casts players as competitive pizza…

P1 Team 2: Yap Battle

April 27, 2024

created by Team 2: Nils Forstall, Ngoc Tran, Atman Jahagirdar, and Casey Nguyen ✧₊∘ Artist’s Statement ∘₊✧ Some of us love to argue for…

P1: Impromptu!

April 27, 2024

Impromptu created by Cyan DeVeaux, Khaled Messai, and Anna Gao in CS247G Spring 2024 Artist Statement  Impromptu!™ is an improv game centered around acting…

Fake Friends – P1 Team1

April 27, 2024

Team 1: Sofia Kim, Butch Nasser, Jennifer Quach, Valerie Tang Artist’s Statement Fake Friends is a cards-based social deduction game played in ~15 minute…

P1-Team6: In the Loop

April 27, 2024

Team 6: Jasmine N, Shuvi J, Ben H, Jailia Y Artist’s Statement In the Loop is a game designed to foster genuine connections through…

P1 Team 26: Don’t Touch My Recipe!

April 27, 2024

Artist’s Statement: We designed Don’t Touch My Recipe! to create an engaging experience that blends together challenge, competition, and fellowship for friends, family, and…

Actify! | Team 16 P1 Final Deliverable

April 26, 2024

Artist’s Statement Actify is a game that inspires players to become comfortable with each other through improv acting together. Actify was inspired by the…

P1: Rumble!

April 26, 2024

Artist Statment: “Rumble!” was born from a desire to blend the animated dynamics of traditional games like Twister and Charades with an innovative focus…

P1 Final Writeup – Brainiac [Team 20]

April 26, 2024

Artist’s Statement We designed Brainiac to capture the enjoyment that comes with uncovering fact from fiction through deciphering the intentions of family, friends, and…

Team 4 P1 Writeup [Last Man Dancing]

April 26, 2024

1. Artist’s Statement “Last Man Dancing” is a social fellowship game with the purpose of bringing together players of varying levels of dancing ability…

P1 – Worry Wrecker

April 26, 2024

Artist’s Statement Worry Wrecker is an opportunity to invite others into your circle of trust through shared laughter, story-telling, problem-solving, and friendly competition. Each…

Team 22 Pitch Perfect P1 Final Game Post

April 26, 2024

Artist’s Statement Our game, Pitch Perfect offers a thrilling blend of creativity, strategy, and unpredictability, designed to transport players into the roller-coaster world of…

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

  • Protected: P2 Refined Prototype — amaru
  • Protected: P2 Playtest Prototype — amaru
  • P4: It’s just a burning memory
  • Reflection Seb
  • P4: Giant Steps V2: Welcome To Tall’s

Recent Comments

  • EvvrryyDDY2 on Critical Play: BABBDI
  • 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

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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