Today I learned quite some things about the approaches followed at the MIT-STEP lab on creating mobile games with visual programming tools. One very interesting platform allows the creation of mobile location-based games with an online authoring environment. The project is called tale blazer (http://taleblazer.org/).

Basically the system allows to define Agents and locate them on a map, one can also create different player roles for a game. What I liked very much is that defining all the logic of an the agents as also the players roles can be done with a visual programming approach similar to Scratch.

So you easily define rules to make agents visible on the map or activate other agents, update agents variables and so on. I will explore further what kind of games one can create with this. The games can be played on iOS and Android just get the client.

Just to wrap up a day of great experiences I had the opportunity to listen to Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantasique at the 20th aniversary concert of the MIT SUMMER PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA. So this was a really great experience and for me just was an impressive demonstration of the vibrant cultural community at MIT.