Augmented Reality games are revolutionizing the gaming landscape. To take matters a step further, Google has now come to the aid of developers by announcing a new offering for building real-world games using Google Maps’ tried-and-tested model of the world.
Google Maps’ real-time updates and rich location data can be used by developers to plan their gaming landscape around real-world landscapes by finding the best places for playing games, irrespective of where the players are.
Google has brought the richness of Maps to the Unity game engine. Here buildings, roads, and parks are being turned into game objects to which developers can add texture, style, and customization to match the look and feel of their game. This ensures a focus on building rich, immersive gameplay without the overhead of scaffolding a global-scale game world.
With Google Maps data integrated into Unity, we were able to focus our time and energy on building detailed virtual experiences for our users to find virtual dinosaurs in the real world. – Alexandre Thabet, CEO, Ludia.
With the new innovation, developers can now access over 100 million 3D buildings, roads, landmarks, and parks from over 200 countries, enabling them to create much more engaging and realistic gameplay across the globe.
We are excited to partner with Google to provide the most up-to-date and rich location data to enable us to create an immersive experience tied to your location. When new buildings or roads are built, we’ll have access to them in our game. Google Maps’ unrivaled location data, covering world-famous landmarks, businesses and buildings, like the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, London Eye, Burj Khalifa, and India Gate, makes exploring your surroundings a breathtaking experience. – Teemu Huuhtanen, CEO, Next Games.
Faster response time and the ability to scale on demand are some of the benefits being provided by building on top of Google Maps’ global infrastructure; and to further help developers, Google has supportive applications like Google Cloud for game server needs and YouTube and Google Play for promotional help. Google will be featuring a live demo at the Game Developer Conference in booth 823 next week in San Francisco.
