Google Maps Applies Gamification by Using Easter Eggs

Google Maps Applies Gamification by Using Easter Eggs

We all love surprises, don’t we? Well, at least the pleasant ones; the ones that bring a smile to our faces and relieve us momentarily from the monotony of our daily lives. In the marketing or business parlance, such surprises are often referred to as “Easter Eggs”. Easter Eggs are pleasant little surprises discreetly put into the product or service offered by marketers to surprise their customers. In the online context, they are hidden gems, features, or moments of surprise buried within the software and throughout the internet. They're designed to catch you off guard and make you smile, that is, if you can find them. They may or may not offer functional utility, but they are believed to enhance the perceived value of the brand in the minds of the customers.  Easter eggs are game elements that are fun to build and fun to find because they reward users that care enough to find and get excited about them. They create this feeling of being an insider with the application or company, which can be incredibly valuable in terms of brand loyalty and engagement.

Google Maps was launched more than a decade ago and since then it has always been one of Google’s most popular platforms.  With Google investing heavy resources to improve its utility and value to its users, Google Maps has become the preferred map navigation app across various mobile devices and platforms. Integrating a host of services and adding utilities like Street View, Navigation and Local Guides the platform has a large user base across the world. In order to help create greater affinity towards the brand and the service, Google has gamified the map user experience by smartly placed certain Easter Eggs within the platform for users to discover as they intuitively engage with the app. 

These are a few examples of Easter Eggs that have found fandom among users of Google Maps:

The Pegman and the Loch Ness Monster:

This is an Easter Egg that is permanently embedded into the application. It is the little yellow person like icon in the bottom right corner of the map screen. Its function is to trigger Street View which lets you virtually tour places far, far away by simply dragging and dropping the yellow man icon anywhere on the map.  

Another Easter Egg or element of surprise added into the Peg Man feature is the use of the Loch Ness Monster. All you have to do is to search for “Loch Ness” and you will see the Google Maps Pegman button change in the bottom right corner.

Use a Dragon as a Means of Transit:

When one seeks directions between Mount Snowden (North Wales) and the Brecon Beacons (South Wales) by Mass Transit, one option that appears will be to take the trip using a Dragon. The trip is estimated to take around 37 minutes to complete. However absurd as it may sound, given the estimated time of flying with a dragon or the fact that they chose to use a dragon as a means of transit, users can find a sense of relief from the monotony of their regular transit by fantasizing about how it would be to fly on a dragon on their way to a destination.

Pokémon on Google Maps:

Google Maps teamed up with Nintendo to employ the popular character Pokémon into the Google Maps interface in 2014 where users were engaged to catch Pokémon inside of the Google Maps app. This later led to the development of the massively popular ‘Pokémon Go’ game.

The Tardis from Doctor Who on Google Maps:

Fans of the popular Doctor Who franchise found the Tardis integrated on the streets of London in Google Maps. Users could actually enter the Tardis from the Street View to checkout and explore its spacious interiors.  The Easter egg can be accessed by clicking on the double-white arrows that appear in front of the police telephone box outside the Earl's Court subway station.

Navigate with Mario Kart:

To celebrate World Mario Day on March 10^th, 2018, Google Maps teamed up with Nintendo to introduce Mario Kart as a GPS marker for the navigation system. Users when they would tap on the ‘Prize Block’ question mark in the bottom right corner of the screen to trigger Mario Time. This would then lead them to tap on the ‘Let's-A-Go!’ button. the GPS marker would turn into Mario driving his familiar racer from Mario Kart. The character would travel along the route with the user until arriving at the destination. This Easter Egg was so well detailed that they even included original sounds made by the character in the game environment with animations like throwing bananas, from the game into the app.

Where’s Waldo Game on Maps:

As part of their April Fool’s Day celebrations in 2018, Google Maps introduced the popular children’s book based game “Where’s Waldo?” into the app platform. They ran the game for an entire week where users saw a waving Waldo on their screens when they accessed the Google Maps platform on their phones and other devices. They would tap on the little Waldo icon in a place which would bring up a page from one of the classic books and they could go about searching for Waldo and his friends Wenda, Woof, Wizard Whitebeard, and also the villainous Odlaw.

Snake on Google Maps:

This year for their April Fool’s Day Easter Egg, Google introduced the classic ‘Snake’ game to Google Maps that allowed users to play the popular game title themed around major cities. Users could play as an ever-growing double-decker bus by snapping up passengers in London for example, or as a cable car in San Francisco or a commuter train in Tokyo. They could also choose a "world" map if they were interested in playing on a planetary scale.

Easter eggs prove how entertaining the user is the key to their loyalty, no matter what product, solution, or information they're looking for. Easter eggs are a popular tool used by game designers to surprise and sustaining the ‘joy of discovery’ in gameplay. It is no surprise that service providers like Google Maps are integrating such elements into the service which is essentially a call to explore the service more deeply.

Dr. Manu Melwin Joy, Assistant Professor, School of Management Studies, CUSAT and Sebastian Panattil, Research Scholar, School of Management Studies, CUSAT.