Google Shared AR Gaming

Shared AR Game

Google

Photon, Unity, Vuforia

When Google came to us in 2016 with new augmented reality tech and the question of how far we could take it, we ran with it. Google envisioned a multiplayer mobile experience that would bridge the gap between Android and iOS and bring users together regardless of their device. At the time there were no existing solutions that allowed all participating users to view the same augmented world in a shared environment. We set out to change that.

In two years, our team of experts grew from fewer than 5 employees to nearly 20. We conducted dozens of experiments to understand how people use and interact with AR, built numerous prototypes that explored a wide variety of game styles based on those findings, and ultimately created an entire mobile game that was released to the public on both iOS and Android garnering over thousands of downloads to date. Nightenfell was the first-ever mobile game to allow multiple users to engage in cross-platform play in the same, shared space. Our experiments gave us unique insight into the special considerations that need to be made when developing for AR, so we published a white paper documenting how those considerations affect everything from design to engineering to art.