Reality Games building engine for real-world data-driven games

The studio behind a location-based property empire game hopes to create a new engine that will enable other developers to build games around real-world data.

Reality Games is best known as the creator of Landlord Real Estate Tycoon, a title that allows users to buy and sell real-world locations. The properties are generated based on data from Foursquare, Facebook and other sources and range from major landmarks to local shops.

“The success of [Landlord] proved that players love to play games with real data,” the team wrote on its blog. “Now, based on that evidence, we want to take the concept further be creating a game engine that will help developers build more games like Landlord.

“Because we a building the game engine for you the developers, we need your input to help us create something you want and will actually benefit from.”

In order to accomplish this, the studio has created a survey to quiz devs on what they would want from such tech.

Reality Games claims its engine will help even small teams build data-driven games, positioning it as a one-stop shop for data sources that will enable faster iteration between concept and beta testing.

It’s a smart move given the popularity in a certain monster-hunting, location-based game.