Uber is having more than 200,000 drivers globally that can bring you a cab in few minutes. Uber unleashes an iPhone game called “UberDrive” with intent to educate drivers to take you to your destination smoothly by taking you through the best routes around your city, as amateur drivers can steer their way into traffic jams, take circuitous paths or even get lost.
Mike Truong, a senior product manager with a lot experience in developing racing games for EA worked with an independent game development studio in Montreal to bring UberDrive to life.
Players in the game begin as a taxi driver in San Francisco and they earn points as they accept trip requests in dispatch zones and take more efficient routes. As players progress in the game they are given access to wider areas in the city and also to new cars.
After users reach at a certain level in the game they will be prompted to apply for a job as a driver using the app without going to their web page. Since the game has maps of San Francisco only and available for the iPhone users in the U.S, there is a lot of room for the game to be improved.
Uber may also choose to work with a project called Open Source Routing Machine instead of depending on the navigation systems of others or creating its own. The project is an open source on-line software like Wikipedia, where companies and people contribute to a database of the best routes from point X to Y anywhere in the world. To take the best routes in its new mobile game, Uber is already using the Open Source Routing Machine and shown to players at the end of their virtual rides.
UberDrive is available for anyone to download for free in the App Store in the U.S. starting today.