How the Google Doodle team used the Realtime Database to build a multiplayer game

Google’s interactive Lotería Doodle digitized the Mexican bingo-style card game as a multiplayer experience for up to five people, allowing users to join public matches or create private games. Developed primarily in JavaScript by one engineer, the game used Firebase Realtime Database to synchronize card dealing, countdown timers, and winner announcements, with transactions ensuring that only the first valid player to call “Lotería!” won. Public matchmaking combined Cloud Functions with database queues to group players into games atomically while avoiding bottlenecks. To support an overnight increase to millions of players, the team load-tested the system and distributed traffic across multiple database shards, manually adjusting the active number of shards according to demand. The Firebase-based backend allowed the team to focus on gameplay and user experience rather than managing multiplayer infrastructure.

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