Create real-world and location based games with Google Maps

[2022 Update] Imagine walking down your own street and suddenly, in best Jurassic Park style, you have to fight a dinosaur (yes, a dinosaur). While this sounds like something that only happens in movies, from now on that idea might actually not be impossible. 

However, don’t worry. Dinosaurs (still) haven’t been brought back to life, but earlier this year, Google announced a new way to improve the location based gaming experience as we know it.

In early 2021, Google released its Google Maps Platform Gaming solution for general availability. With the Gaming solution, developers will be able to use Google Maps’ data to build games based on real-world locations and create new exciting experiences for players. 

The Google Maps Platform Gaming solution is a development platform for creating games using real world scenes constructed from Google Maps’ own geospatial data. The platform allows developers’ access to geographic data and gives way for games where in-game characters can walk along streets and interact with their surroundings.

As an added feature, Google has provided locations which game developers can use to place things such as game prices and bosses within the game that players can interact with when navigating the real world while interacting with the game world. In the video below, you can see some of the already released games.

(Source: Google Maps)

The gaming services are made up of two components: The Maps SDK for Unity, and The Playable Locations API, both offering the best possibilities for game developers. The data from these components covers the entire world except for a few unsupported regions.

If this isn’t good news for game developers, I’m not sure what is. We’re pretty excited to follow the updates and find out what kinds of games we might see in the future. 

Until we have more news to share with you on this topic, we make sure to keep you updated on other new and exciting updates from Google Maps on our blog.