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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

Visual Design of Games: Cheese or Font and Secret Hitler

April 20, 2021

Elements of Cheese or Font Core: Names of cheeses and fonts to identify Core: Space for player to write guess for each name Core:…

Visual Design of Games

April 20, 2021

Proximity: I choose to remove the table from Cheese or Font because it’s an unnecessary design choice and is repetitive: the words appear above…

Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable – The { } And

April 20, 2021

Game Description + Theme The { } And is a Getting-To-Know-You game in which 2 players ask each other questions to test their relationship. Players…

Visual Design of Games

April 20, 2021

Cheese or Font? Elements Core: Input box, query name (i.e. “Helvetica”), a way to chose a category, player score, timer Supportive: how-to-play, hints when…

We’re not really strangers critical play

April 20, 2021

Intro After we played that snippet in class, I had become interested in playing We’re Not Really Strangers in a fuller setting, so this…

Critical Play #3: One Night Ultimate Werewolf

April 20, 2021

For this Critical Play, I played One Night Ultimate Werewolf on netgames.io with two other people.  Formal Elements Players This game is designed for…

Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable with skribbl.io

April 20, 2021

Background Information Skribbl.io is an online multi-player drawing and guessing game. Creator:@ticedev Link to game: https://skribbl.io/ Formal Elements of the Game 1. Players Each…

Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging, and Getting Vulnerable – skribbl.io

April 20, 2021

Mechanics & Formal Elements For this week’s Critical Play, I played the online browser game skribbl.io. The premise is simple: each player gets a…

Visual Design of Games

April 20, 2021

Proximity exploration: For cheese or font, the main elements that seem the most similar are the “cheese” and “font” buttons that essentially mark a…

Visual Design of Games

April 19, 2021

I feel that Dicey Dungeons is a great example of how graphical design principles can be used to make a game intuitive to the…

Judging skribbl.io

April 19, 2021

skribbl.io is a judging game where one player gets assigned a secret word from one of 3 options that they then have to illustrate…

Visual Design of Games

April 19, 2021

Graphic Design for Game Designers Exercise Identify elements of cheese or font Core Elements Word “Play Quiz” button Timer Score keeper “Next” button Final…

Critical Play: skribbl.io

April 19, 2021

Formal elements skribbl.io is a free online game you can play with friends in a closed room or play with random people online. In…

Visual Design of Games

April 19, 2021

The above still is from the Hyper Light Drifter, which is a game I find particularly beautiful. I feel that this image (and the game…

Visual Design of Games

April 19, 2021

Cheese or Font? Elements of Cheese or Font? The core elements of the game include: Text box for answers User’s score Timer Prompt (“Tristan”…

Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable – skribbl.io

April 19, 2021

Overview skribbl.io is a free multiplayer drawing and guessing game. One game consists of a few rounds in which every round someone has to…

Sketchnote: Balancing Games: Chance and Skill

April 19, 2021

Cheese or Font Makeover + The Bridge — Visual Design of Games

April 19, 2021

In “Graphic Design for Game Designers”, Christina Wodtke recommends experimenting with the elements of graphic design by reimagining the “Cheese or Font” quiz. Here…

Critical Play: Among Us

April 19, 2021

I believe that one reason Among Us has seen so much success in its lifetime can be boiled down into three main categories: Unlike…

Visual Design of Games

April 19, 2021

Game Analysis For this assignment, I chose to look at Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, because I really enjoy its graphic style, and I believe…

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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

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Recent Posts

  • Sketchnote: Onboarding
  • Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies — amaru
  • Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies – Mateus
  • Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies – Andrew
  • Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies

Recent Comments

  • amaru on Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Amelia Chen
  • suyeshen on Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable – Sue Shen
  • Izzy on P2: AI Judgment Day
  • Izzy on P2: The Future We Deserve – The Broadcast
  • Izzy on P2: Pokemon The Next Adventure

Categories

  • Featured
  • Project One
  • P2: The Future We Deserve
  • milestone
  • 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
  • Sketchnotes
  • P4: Refine a Game
  • Project Two: The Future We Deserve
  • From the Instructor
  • Project Three: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
  • ReadWritePlay
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