Here’s the big breakthrough – Google Maps APIs Gaming has just been announced as available for game developers big and small, here, there, and everywhere. This means that Google has just given developers the keys to integrate Google Maps with games, making it now possible to create games like Pokemon GO and Ingress. You realize that these were exclusively for Niantic’s use before – with Ingress and Pokemon GO – but they are now available for all game developers.
Game developers should jump on this bandwagon pretty quick – and some of them already have. Three games coming out soon will be using this new integration – Jurassic World Alive, Ghostbusters World, and The Walking Dead: Our World. If you look at the trailers for these games, you realize that the gameplay is pretty much similar to Pokemon GO – they utilize a full mapped-Earth GPS-based gameplay.
Before today, it would have been possible to create a game like that, but it would have been really, really difficult. Even the pre-cursor to this – Harry Potter: Wizards Unite – had to use the old Ingress engine so that it could create gameplay that was similarly GPS-based. But these three new games will be specifically using the new APIs.
Game developers who want to get this while it’s hot can do so by going through the Google Developers Maps/Gaming homepage. As we mentioned, this is hot off the press, so you might be one of the first few who would jump on this tech.
SOURCE: SlashGear
