Google's Smarty Pins map game tests your knowledge about location-based events
Google released another web-based game today called Smarty Pins that will most likely distract you from other things that you should be doing. Powered by Google Maps, this quiz game tests your knowledge …
Context & Ripple Effects
Smarty Pins is the latest entry in a line Google has been building since at least 2010, when the playable Pac-Man doodle became a template for using its own products as toys, and continued with the 2012 Maps 8-bit NES April Fool. The pattern is consistent: take Google Maps data, wrap it in a game, and let the press do the distribution.
The pickup confirms the formula still works — TechCrunch, Engadget, VentureBeat and The Next Web all carried the same launch-day story on or about July 2, 2014, giving a free browser quiz the reach of a product announcement.
First-order effects
- Google gets consumer attention and engagement for Google Maps at zero media cost, with eight-plus syndicated outlets effectively advertising the product for it.
- Smarty Pins doubles as a public demonstration of what Google's map and place data can power beyond navigation, shown off in the most accessible format possible — a browser quiz.
Second-order effects
- Every launch like this raises user expectations that a maps product is also an entertainment surface, pressure that falls on rival mapping services competing for everyday consumer mindshare.
- Coverage across the major tech blogs normalizes location-based trivia and game formats, lowering the barrier for third-party developers to treat map data as game content rather than utility plumbing.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, geographic datasets shift from being navigation infrastructure toward being raw material for a location-based game genre — with whichever company owns the richest map data positioned to license or host that play.
The trend: Consumer mapping platforms are steadily doubling as brand-marketing game surfaces, with Google repeatedly converting its own map data into playable demos that the tech press distributes for free.