Game Of The Year
- Brand
- Year
- 2018
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Quiz & Trivia
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Google Brand Studio
Objective
Google's Year in Search is the brand's annual moment tying its identity to the one dataset only it has: what the world actually typed into the search box. For 2018 the team wanted people to play that recap instead of just watching it, turning trending queries into the first game ever built on Search data — and giving players a score worth daring friends to beat.
Solution
You open the game in a browser, no download or account, tell the host what to call you, and pick a voice for it. Then you face up to 20 rounds, most of them head-to-head calls on which of two things people searched more in 2018 — a meme, an athlete, a dish, a headline. Ten seconds per question, faster answers score higher, and three misses end the run; survive long enough and the questions get harder. The host chimes in between rounds with a fact or a joke, and a strong run unlocks a bonus round where you swipe topics as trending up or down versus 2017. At the end you get a final score with buttons to post it and challenge friends to beat it — replay and the questions reshuffle.
- 1
The player opens gameoftheyear.withgoogle.com, where the pitch is testing how well they know what trended in Google Search over the year, and starts the game.
- 2
Before playing, the player enters a name for the voice host to use when addressing them, and sets the host's voice with speed and pitch sliders or mutes it entirely.
- 3
Each round poses a multiple-choice trivia question about the year's searches, often a head-to-head pair like Laurel vs. Yanny, and the player has 10 seconds to answer, with faster picks worth more points.
- 4
After each pick the host reacts out loud, reveals whether it was correct, and adds a factoid or joke about the topic before the next round.
- 5
The player has three lives; a wrong answer costs one, and a third mistake ends the run.
- 6
Surviving rounds raises the difficulty, moving from two-way choices to questions with more answer options spanning world events, celebrities, memes, sport, products and food.
- 7
Strong play unlocks a bonus round where the player swipes a rapid stream of topics left or right to say whether each trended more or less in 2018 than in 2017, again against a 10-second clock.
- 8
A run lasts up to 20 questions plus the bonus rounds, ending early if the player loses all three lives first.
- 9
At the end the game tallies and displays the player's score, which typically lands anywhere from a couple hundred to around 600 points.
- 10
From the results screen the player can post their score to Twitter or Facebook to challenge friends, or replay immediately for a fresh set of questions.
