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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: P2: The Future We Deserve

P2: Reflection

November 1, 2025

Overall, I really enjoyed making my IF game.  First, it was a creative writing exercise that was long overdue. I feel like so much…

Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters

October 10, 2025

Figure 1: Sketchnote of Chapter 1 of the reading Figure 2: Sketchnote of Chapter 7 of the reading

Another Job – Ellie Vela, P2: The Future We Deserve

November 5, 2024

Overview “Another Job” is a text-based interactive fiction game about the dreariness of work. The year is 2084, and it’s the first day of…

P2: The Future We Deserve – The Broadcast

November 4, 2024

Play The Broadcast here. The Broadcast is an interactive fiction game where players step into the shoes of a college radio host in a…

P2: Reflection

November 4, 2024

I was really drawn to the idea of telling a story set against an environmental catastrophe, specifically a hurricane since I grew up in…

Circuit City—P2

November 3, 2024

Premise/Overview Welcome to Circuit City, the safest city in the world! You play as Casey Brooker, the young prodigy Chief of Police who helped…

P2: The Future We Deserve

November 3, 2024

The Test GAME LINK – PASSWORD: cs377g   Game Overview At its highest level, my game is, as the name suggests, about a Turing…

P2: Reflection – Sam Jett

November 2, 2024

Before doing this project, I was very nervous about writing fiction. I had not really written any fiction since high school and had not…

P2 reflection – Grace

November 2, 2024

This assignment is my first interaction with creating interactive fiction games. Because of the game’s structure and my limited interactions with interactive fiction games,…

P2: Reflection

November 2, 2024

Creating my IF game helped me learn how to weave storytelling and player engagement in a way I hadn’t expected. I started with a…

P2 – 2072

November 2, 2024

Link to Game: https://00grace00.itch.io/2072 Overview: 2072 is an interactive fiction game developed in Twine. The game originates from a conversation between my dad and…

A monochrome, haunting image of a teddy bear against a black backdrop. The teddy bear is missing an arm.

Nils Forstall CS377G P2: The Future We Deserve

November 2, 2024

ESCAPE by Nils Forstall I love using my phone. I know people like me get a lot of criticism for always being online and…

P2: The Future We Deserve

November 2, 2024

Link to Game: https://gracielly.itch.io/echoes-of-eden Premise: The story revolves around Eunoia, a former user of “Eden,” a virtual sanctuary created by Moogle, a tech giant…

P2: Cook King

November 2, 2024

Link to Game https://anaxrocks.itch.io/cook-king Overview Cook King is a narrative-driven adventure game set in a dystopian future where food is primarily consumed in the…

P2: The Future We Deserve: The Road Not Taken

November 1, 2024

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” —Robert Frost,…

[Khushi] P2: The Future We Deserve

November 1, 2024

Talia’s Supremacy Talia’s supremacy is a game that has the player make quick decisions that will affect the food distribution to different nations and…

P2: The Future We Deserve – Sam Jett

November 1, 2024

Link: https://samjett.itch.io/out-of-sight             ——-PLEASE PLAY FIRST!——-                 Overview: “Out of Sight” is…

P2: The Future We Deserve

November 1, 2024

Link https://motino101.itch.io/next  Please play first. Overview I’ve been grappling with how quickly ChatGPT has integrated into our lives, especially considering it was only developed…

P2: Reflection – Mayshu

November 1, 2024

Creating the P2 Interactive Fiction (IF) game was an experience that reshaped my understanding of storytelling in gaming, especially in a text-based format. Initially,…

P2: The Future We Deserve – Mayshu

November 1, 2024

Shadows of Luminous “Haunted by the past, bound to the truth.“ https://mayshu.itch.io/shadows-of-luminous   Overview The game centers on Echo, a young woman who awakens…

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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  • December 2023
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  • January 2022
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • September 2020
  • February 2017

Recent Posts

  • P2: Reflection
  • P2 Playtest Prototype
  • P2: Reflection by Ngoc
  • P2: Reflection [Chronos]
  • ‘Anchor’ Reflection

Recent Comments

  • Unlocking New Levels: Challenges in Dress-Up Games - Outfits Game on Pixel Runway — Or, What Games Teach Fashion‑Tech About Joyful Retention
  • Christina Wodtke on Sketchnote 1 — amaru
  • Christina Wodtke on Sketchnotes: MDAO by Ngoc
  • Among Us Features Gameplay Download Guide | GridBox on Among Us: Critical Play of Social Deduction
  • Hollow Knight and Silksong: Redefining Game Narrative - FizzClick.com | Your Source for Business, Technology & Entertainment News on Hollow Knight, Metroidvanias, and Storytelling

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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