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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

Project 1: Code War

April 25, 2025

By Team 6: Olivia Feng, Sue Shen, Riley Pittman, and Whayden Dhamcho Artist’s Statement Code War was born from a fascination with identity, uncertainty,…

Project 1: Common Thread

April 25, 2025

Brought to you by Team 13: Lorenzo Ahn, Karina Li, Luke McFall, Faith Zhang Artist’s Statement Common Thread was created to bring strangers, friends,…

Joaquin Mindmap 2: Narrative Architecture

April 22, 2025

Critical Play Competitive Analysis – Cards Against Humanity – Andreas

April 17, 2025

THE GAME OF TRUTH vs CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY I’ve decided to compare The Game of Truth (our game) with Cards Against Humanity (CAH). I…

Joaquin Critical Play 2: Competitive Analysis – Battle With Cubes!

April 16, 2025

For my critical play, I chose to play Battle With Cubes!, created by Weiwei Hsu, a 4 player party game in which two teams…

Critical Play: Competitive Analysis- Xueqi Chen

April 15, 2025

Competitive Analysis: Perfect Match vs. Apples to Apples Target Audience, Game Creator, and Platform “Perfect Match” is a party card game created by our…

Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships – Evan

April 15, 2025

Joaquin Sketchnote 2: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships

April 14, 2025

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype? – Dalynn Miller

April 11, 2025

How does the amount of detail in each assigned role impact how “into” the game each player feels? This is important to answer because…

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype? – Lour Drick

April 11, 2025

Our game, tentatively called Scene & Unseen, is a prompt response/collaborative improv game in a similar vein to Awkward Moments. The idea is that one…

What do Prototypes Prototype?

April 10, 2025

We are working on a game that’s something between Spyfall, Pictionary, Just One, and Taboo. In our game two people are selected as guessers…

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…

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

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

Recent Posts

  • Critical Play: Blood on the Clocktower – Tianze
  • Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships
  • Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships – Jinpu
  • Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships – Tray
  • Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships (w/ Optional Challenge)

Recent Comments

  • ban on You Will Always Be at the Mercy of the Author’s Ghost (RWP)
  • Jeffery Cai on Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable…
  • Trini Rogando on Honkai: Star Rail – MDA & 8 Kinds of Fun
  • EvvrryyDDY2 on Critical Play: BABBDI
  • Male Monitor – Seminar Group 2 on Through the Looking Glass: Gendered Gazes in Video Games 

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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