3. [OOMFH] GeoGuessr: What kind of GeoGuessr player are you?

09 May, 2023

This is the first part of my series called OOMFH (One Of My Favorite Hobbies)

*click* I’ll take it

Let me tell you about one of my favorite hobbies- GeoGuessr¹. You’ve probably heard about it already. And if you did not hear it from me, probably you have already seen gameplay from Georainbolt’s viral Tiktoks or any other GeoGuessr professional’s YouTube channel (i.e., RC GeoGuessr, GeoWizard, etc.). It was a big trend during the lockdown days. If we couldn’t leave our houses, then we’ll explore Google Maps.

GeoGuessr (https://geoguessr.com/) is a game in which you are dropped at a random Google Street View location and you must use Sherlock-esque logic to deduce where in the world you are. You are permitted to move around and look around the area before making your final guess as the clock ticks down. Usually you play against yourself in 'singleplayer' mode or against another person in 'multiplayer' mode. When you do 'party' mode you can play with friends (that’s what I like to do).

I’m obsessed with the game. I started (seriously) playing it for roughly 3 months now (at the same time as my Duolingo streak haha). I remember I played it in 2013, but I didn’t get seriously addicted until a decade later…

There are different approaches to how you play in all honestly. I've observed about 4 different play styles. It really depends on why you play. With enough time and effort, any strategy is viable. A combination of anything in between is also very reasonable.

1.) The Meta Master

meta: “most efficient tactic available”

Well, that is what is called a backronym, where the "definition" was created after the word/acronym. The word meta is Greek and means "beyond". In the gaming world, it has been used to refer to things "beyond" or "outside" the game.

There are different definitions of “meta” in GG, but the most common description I’ve seen is that meta refers to the clues that are shown in the game.

If you want to be really good at the game, meta is key:

Examples of in-game meta (these are game-related details that you wouldn't see if you were dropped in that place in the world IRL) include:

1. Camera generations
2. Google Car Appearance (e.g., color of the car, if the google car has a rack, etc.)
3. Rifts in the sky
4. Google coverage (a lot of countries are not shown because of the “Official Coverage”, so you can eliminate those places right away)

Examples of country-specific meta (they're not really Google Car or in-game elements, but you use this to recognize the country if you were there IRL), include:

1. Bollards
2. Signs
3. Road lines
4. Electricity poles

Nothing will make you better, faster. ²

[I have one absolutely phenomenal friend that is genius with the GG meta. I am absolutely amazed at her wicked ability to be able to scan the entire screen within 3 seconds and go:

”Oh that’s Guatemala 🇬🇹”

”Whaaaa- 🤨 how do you know so quickly?”

”There’s Spanish all around, also the rack on the Google Car.”

BING a near 5k³. Dear god… I am so impressed by her being able to recall literal encyclopedic knowledge of the camera position in GG. I hope that we can walk along the road and spot a google car and be in a photo together.]

2.) The Geography Viber

If you want to learn about the world, then try your absolute best to never learn any meta. The meta will keep you from doing what you want to do, which is focusing on what the world actually looks like. Focus on training your visual memory, like "oh yeah, the signs have ł on them and I have seen buildings like that before and it turned out that was Poland".

Ways to be better using this strategy:

• learn a lot of languages
• remember the capitals and major cities of each country
• memorize the type of vegetation/climate
• guess based on the pedestrians

[Ok, that last one is a very controversial tactic, but it does really help you in your deduction. For example, I was dropped on a map where I was baited by a bunch of Easter Island heads everywhere, but the people around were all Japanese-looking

I have a friend who is incredibly skillful at the game. He uses a combination of meta and “vibes”, as we call it. Actually, he told me he doesn’t rely on meta. He just plays the game a lot and he tries to memorize a lot of places, helping with his pattern-recognition. This is a very surprising fact to me because he never left his home country, so basically- he really did remember a lot of the places he’s visited on GG. And also, he needs to touch some grass lol. Some real grass, not some computer grass we see when we spawn randomly on a farm in the middle of Romania.

Nonetheless, I am so utterly impressed by his vibes. He’s cracked. I hope that I can take him out to a bar and order him a beer.]

3.) The World Traveler

Sometimes you get really lucky in GeoGuessr and you spawn somewhere you have been before. You don’t have to rely on problem-solving skills like studying the road signs, if you literally have a photo of it of you posing next to it in your phone.

Ways to get better using this strategy:

• actually touch some real grass lol (no really, just visit the places that get Google Car coverage)

[Jokes aside, I actually have employed this strategy many times. There are some places where I actually have visited and have walked through. I think it’s really cool that have some background knowledge of the place and have seen it IRL! A friend of mine is very very cultured and has been to a ton of places in the Baltics and the Balkan nations. I'm so impressed when I see him guess a place where he's already been to]

4.) The Empty Brainer

This is a player who doesn’t really know how to make really informed geographical decisions, they try their luck and pick somewhere while in a state of panic (I've done this multiple times!). Sometimes the player just plonks their guess down out of fright in the most random of places… It's okay. Sometimes I don't vibe well at all.

[I’m not super serious in ranked competition games… however, I played against some of the weakest players and was very disappointed in my opponents guesses. Ok wait- I literally just started playing ranked games and I’m in the Silver Division. I really should be higher hehe. I enjoy casual games better. Less stress.

But anyway, some people guess the most horrible and nonsensical places. How on earth would someone guess USA when there are Cyrillic letters everywhere???]

I actually created a discord server for the friends I met while playing a lot of GeoGuessr. I met them in a language exchange server and they’re all very international, talented, brilliant, and overall good people. It’s refreshing to be in a nice group where we can share our thoughts and also play our favorite game. Also, it seems like the only criteria to join the server is to be very kind and sensible, be a little nerdy, know more than 1 language, and play GeoGuessr ☺️

~Delta Sky Club member,

<3 K

Definitions and Links

#2023 #friends #fun #games #gaming #geography #geoguessr #hobby #life #may 2023 #oomfh