Google this week announced that it will open its Maps APIs to video game developers, which could result in far more realistic settings in augmented reality games. With access to real-time map updates and rich location data, developers will have many choices of settings for their games.
The APIs will provide devs with what Google has described as a “living model of the world” to use as a foundation for game worlds. Developers will have access to more than 100 million 3D buildings, roads, landmarks and parks from more than 200 countries around the globe.
Google has released a new software development kit for the popular cross-platform game engine, Unity. Developers who use the Unity SDK won’t need previous experience with Google Maps. The Unity integration will allow real-world buildings, roads and other structures to be transformed into objects that can be modified and tweaked as required for the game.
Google will demonstrate this technology at next week’s 2018 Game Developers Conference, which will kick off on Monday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Location, Location, Location
The first three games that will utilize Google Maps APIs — Jurassic World Alive, The Walking Dead: Our World and Ghostbusters World — will combine augmented reality and location-based gameplay. Each will offer an experience not unlike that of the hit Pokémon Go, which lets players collect virtual characters that can be seen only on their smartphone screens.
The gameplay likely will be similar — but may involve capturing dinosaurs, shooting zombies and catching ghosts that turn up in a player’s location.
“How could you do these sorts of location-based games without the mapping data?” pondered Simon Solotko, senior analyst at Tirias Research.
“Google was smart to acquire the firms that were creating this technology,” he told LinuxInsider. “While this could have been something created by independent game developers, we are seeing that Google is leading the efforts now.”
Whole New Worlds
AR gaming is just the latest use of Google’s technology.
“Google Maps is already working with companies, cultural institutions and groups to expand imagery and collections available to users through the Maps API,” noted Josh Crandall, principal analyst at Netpop Research.
“Google is now enabling developers to unleash their imaginations into the world in which we live,” he told LinuxInsider.
The Maps API could also inspire a new generation of creative geo-based games that were unachievable before now, due to the mapping costs involved, while the Street View imagery and 3D models could support even more realistic settings.
“Game developers won’t be hamstrung by the need to develop mapping tech and will be able to leverage the massive geo database that Google’s built, at a nominal cost,” Crandall said.
Mapping “is a necessity for compelling AR gaming, whether it is collection quests and other mild social gaming like RPGs, [or] first-person shooters,” suggested game industry veteran Richard Boyd, CEO of Tanjo.
