The Location-based Mobile games are trending since the launch of Pokemon Go, which in-turn lead most of the gaming companies to concentrate on Location-Based Gaming. The Walking Dead and Jurassic World are using Google Maps under the Hood. Google has announced that it is opening its maps platform to game developers to easily create real-world games.
The Maps platform will be divided into three parts:
- Developers who sign up will have access to real-time Google Maps data.
- Google is also launching a new Maps software development kit for Unity.
- Google is introducing a new API so that developers can create gameplay experiences around real-world locations.
The Integration with the Unity Engine will allow the developers to customize maps with what seems like a great flexibility for the game developers said product manager Clementine Jacoby. He also mentioned that one of the goals of the project was to help developers build detailed worlds using Google Maps, which will help developers to choose particular kinds of buildings and transform each and everyone. Developers can create unique world environments that feel connected to real world said by Patrick Donelan, Lead Engineer Google Maps.
Google has already partnered with three game developers on new location-based titles, all of which have been previously announced. These include Jurassic World Alive, The Walking Dead: Our World, and Ghostbusters World. Google started to receive a lot of requests from game developers for using Maps in their Games.
We were a bit surprised by the amount of demand that we saw from the gaming space, said by Jacoby.
Google has contacted many Game Development studios which resulted in the Maps gaming initiative which led to the focus on Location-based Mobile gaming. Jacoby also explained that the difficulty to create accurate mapping data is one of the main reasons there wasn’t a surge of location-based games that followed the wake of Pokemon Go’s widespread success. Google says it will be talking more about the initiative next week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
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