Have you ever imagined what it
would be like to be transported somewhere in the world completely unknown to
you? And how you would figure out where you are? In this post, I’m discussing a
game that simulates this kind of experience virtually, using Google
Streetview.
GeoGuessr is a web browser game first
developed in 2013, in which players are presented with a series of five Streetview
images from five different locations across the world in turn. Based on what they see,
players must guess the location that the images were taken by pinpointing on a
zoom-able world map. After making their guess, they are assigned a score
between 0 and 5000 based on the distance between the guessed location and the
actual location the images derive from. The scores for all five rounds are then
totalled at the end.
From a geographical perspective,
GeoGuessr is thought-provoking for several reasons. The views of landscapes
provided by the Streetview images give players the opportunity to see places they
would not otherwise see, yet inevitably represent environments through –
literally and figuratively – a certain kind of lens. Secondly, the act of
finding and interpreting the information presented in the images is an exercise
that reveals the individual processes and customs through which we make sense
of what a place is like – the ways in which our relationships with environments
are formed. And lastly, the design of the game itself works to turn the medium
of Streetview images into an experience that – more or less successfully –
enables players to engage meaningfully with different places across the world.
Let’s delve deeper into these
three points of interest to unpick how and why GeoGuessr presents such valuable
questions about what ‘places’ are in the digital age, and how we interact with
them.
Exploring landscapes
As we consider the experience of ‘visiting’
locations in GeoGuessr and interpreting what you find, the key factor to
recognise is that the environments you explore are communicated as images:
moments in space and time, captured from a fixed point of view with specific
equipment, with specific motivations.
Images are evocative tools for
communicating information about places. So much so that, even if viewed a great
distance away from the location in which the image was made, we can often still
get a sense of what it is like to be in the place represented onscreen.
And it is their detachment from
the moment in which they are captured that makes it possible for GeoGuessr to expand the boundaries of exploration
as a practice into the virtual realm. We are able to see places we would never
physically visit in our lives, and get a sense of what it might be like to be
there, at those locations. It is for this reason, in part, that GeoGuessr has
been praised as an educational resource, providing learners with an extensive
database of everyday scenes taken across a wide range of landscapes, and
packaging it in gameplay that encourages you to pay attention to detail in your
surroundings. With each guess, you can open your eyes to another small portion
of the world that you are unlikely to ever visit in person.
Importantly, the Streetview
images that GeoGuessr uses have their own distinct qualities. When viewed, the
viewer can rotate the image nearly every direction from a fixed point, situated
at roughly head height from the street. Additionally, the viewer can use
onscreen arrows to navigate between the images taken as the Streetview vehicle
moved through the site, as if you were travelling through the environment
yourself. It is these two characteristics of the pictures that make the
experience of viewing them more immersive than the fixed, linear perspective of
traditional images. Unhindered by the borders of the image for both perspective
and movement, Streetview pictures gives players a better appreciation for
scale, and how nearby points in space are connected together. In short, the
experience is much closer to how we would encounter an environment in the
flesh.
Indeed, the creator of GeoGuessr,
Anton Wallén, has said that the idea for the game arose from his enjoyment of
visiting faraway locations on Streetview, and how the images could make the
viewer feel as if they themselves are in the places photographed. On a more
everyday level, many of you reading this will be familiar with the process of using
Streetview to scout a future journey. For pedestrians and even those travelling
by vehicle, the street-level perspective of Streetview’s images is often much
more suitable for familiarising oneself with a route than the birds-eye view of
a map.
And yet, navigating in Streetview
is still a very simplified version of what we would experience by inhabiting a
place ‘in real life’. Although we witness what is happening in a location
through momentary scenes, the moving camera is largely detached from the realities
of day-to-day life in the localities being photographed. As viewers, we are treated
instead to approved snapshots taken at intervals along roads, taken during particular
weather conditions, times of day, days of the week, and so on, which inevitably
colour the mental model of the location that we develop in our brains as we
navigate between the scenes.
And as we develop these mental
models, we must not forget the context in which Streetview images are produced.
Google’s cameras travel through the locations being photographed, and the
images they capture are stitched together and uploaded to the Google Maps
website for those with internet access to browse at their discretion. They are,
first and foremost, images produced for the benefit of a multinational
corporation and people living predominantly in the Global North, who more
readily have access to the equipment needed to view them. That is to say, that
the images do not represent a view of the landscape in accordance with the values
of the community that lives there, but instead have been extracted for
extraneous purposes.
In the same vein, there are many places that are ‘off the map’
because Google Streetview just hasn’t been there, for a whole host of political
and logistical reasons.
So in spite of being a method of
imag(in)ing places that is often construed to be more immersive and accurate
than previous imaging/mapping techniques, Streetview ultimately reflects the
same observations about landscape images that cultural geographers have made
for decades. That is, that every instance of landscape representation is
determined by relationships of power that influence the form used to develop the
image, which places themselves are represented, the motivations behind these
two details – and, in turn, how ‘knowledge’ about a location is produced.
Navigation and interpretation
The method of playing GeoGuessr involves
a bit of detective work – using clues from the environments pictured, along
with your own judgements, to build up an idea of where in the world the images
have been captured.
Fortunately, because the game
uses Streetview images, you can look in all directions and travel in any direction
you wish (providing that the Streetview camera has travelled down the road in
question). In nearly all cases, moving through the locality from the starting
point is essential to get enough evidence to make an educated guess about where
it could be. And it is this process of evidence-gathering, as you take note of
significant details you find while moving through the stitched images, that you
come to experience the intricacies which make any particular site unique.
It is a somewhat transformative ritual,
because as well as learning something about the place being represented, we learn
about ourselves – the array of memories, social norms, pre-cognitive
experiences, and other sources of information through which we come to know a
place.
That said, the characteristics of
the information provided in Streetview (i.e. what can be perceived directly at
street level) mean that certain kinds of details become more important than
others for discovering your location. These are some of those most common types
players use, which become familiar over time:
Road signs
Languages used on signs/buildings
Road markings
Climate
Terrain – vegetation, gradient,
etc.
Cultural symbols – flags, icons
etc.
Built environment – architectural
styles, street furniture, etc.
Landmarks
The need to make these kinds of
observations demonstrates how the gameplay encourages you to build up a
relationship with the environment being shown. When the game begins, you are
simply ‘dropped’ into a location with no instructions on where to go or what to
look for. Instead, the incentive must come from the player. Every journey is
different and personal – which roads to turn down, which details are noticed or
ignored, and how those details are interpreted. You perform your relationship
with the place into being as you navigate; a kind of cognitive mapping mediated
by the screen. By the time you’ve made your guess, having found and deciphered
what you’ve seen by travelling steadily at street level, you’ve developed a
more deeply affective relationship with the place in question than if you’d
just looked at it on a map, or read an encyclopaedia entry.
It is a combination of the
instantaneous decisions and reactions the player makes, and their pre-existing
paradigm of social norms and individual experiences, that is drawn upon to make
sense of the world. By bringing together both of these elements within the
overarching timeline of a virtual journey through an unfamiliar environment,
GeoGuessr can quite effectively develop meaningful relationships between
diverse players and diverse locations, which expand the players’ mental archive
of geographical knowledge – albeit within the limits of solely visual
communication, and the player’s willingness to keep exploring.
The capacity of the game’s design
to grasp and maintain players’ interest is the subject to which I’ll now turn.
Design and technology
GeoGuessr is an example of a game
that applies a very simple mechanic very successfully to create a fulfilling
play experience. By setting the aim or ‘win condition’ of the game as ‘finding your
location’, it inherently encourages players to think about what makes the place
in question unique, and pay close attention to detail to find the relevant
information.
In the time since its initial
release, however, the game’s developers have fashioned new opportunities for
players to interact with the photographed environments. In Challenge Mode, the
player can limit their guessing time by setting a timer of custom length,
forcing them to be more focused in how they filter information. When this mode
is selected, the player is also given a URL they can send to friends. This URL
gives these others players the same set of five images and same time
restrictions, allowing them to compete to get the highest score. From there, it
can be fascinating to compare how and why different players construed the information
to reach the conclusions they did.
Additionally, using GeoGuessr’s
Official Maps, you can narrow down the geographical area from which Streetview
images are selected to individual countries, regions, and cities. If you are
interested in exploring a particular country or region you have never travelled
to, or perhaps want to test your knowledge of a familiar area, these game modes
give you the means to do so. By giving the player more agency to choose where
they want to explore, the gameplay can provoke a more deeply affecting
experience.
In a similar vein, GeoGuessr now gives
users to ability to create their own maps and publish them on the website for other
players to explore. In the Popular Maps section, players can find numerous
user-made, themed maps that allow them to explore the specific types of places
that interest them. These include maps with a more generalised remit, such as
capital cities, to more niche categories such as Premier League football
grounds, or even locations from films and video games.
The downside of this creative feature
– that it is behind a paywall. To be able to build your own maps – as well as
getting your own personalised pin to drop on the map, and avoiding ads – is a
privilege you can only benefit from if you pay $2.99 a month. Of course, many would
be happy to pay such an amount for a game they enjoy regularly, and if you’re wanting
to create personalised maps for others to try, you’re certainly someone who is
more deeply invested in the game. But clearly a paywall can create barriers to
engagement, preventing those who cannot afford/do not want to spend that amount
of money on the game from becoming more closely involved in the GeoGuessr
community.
Despite the possibilities for personalisation,
it is important to remember that GeoGuessr is at the mercy of Google with
regard to which places are included in the Streetview database, the extent of
the imaging that takes place at these locations, and the quality of the final
product. Coming across a grainy image – common when looking at parts of the US
and Australia – can be a significant source of frustration for players trying
to find out more about the place onscreen and make accurate guesses. Moreover, Google
updates the images of some locations more frequently than others, meaning that
the picture you’re presented with can be several years old. It is not something
that can be easily resolved by the game’s developers; though one thing you can
do at the end of each round is to give it a rating out of five stars, which
then goes on to affect the likelihood of that location being chosen for future
players.
One longstanding issue that
affects which images are selected in GeoGuessr is the apparent over-representation
of some countries compared to others. It is very common to be dropped, at least
once in a game, onto a long, straight road in an almost-deserted landscape in Russia
or Australia, with little or no locational information to guide you.
This effect is down to how the
game’s algorithms determine which images are shown to players. Countries with a
large surface area that Streetview has captured extensively, such as the aforementioned
countries, as well as the USA, Canada, Brazil and Scandinavian states, appear
more frequently in Standard Mode than their smaller counterparts. While the customised
maps are one way around the problem, this matter hints at the power of
algorithms in determining which types of information we are exposed to,
creating filter bubbles. The developers of GeoGuessr have openly discussed the
balance of locations represented many times, and their aim to continue
improving this aspect of the experience. But it will always be an intricate balance
to ensure a wider selection of places to explore without unduly minimising the
presence of other countries, cultures, and types of environment.
Design decisions ultimately have
a significant impact within the fields of power that shape representations of
places in digital games like GeoGuessr, and consequently how we come to
understand them. Of course, it is simultaneously these very same algorithms
that make looking through images of such varied environments to be an engaging
experience. However, with the over-representation of certain kinds of
landscapes, and the reliance on the effective (though repetitive) singular
mechanic of finding your location, it is more debatable whether the gameplay
can retain player interest continually, for more than a few hours of time spent
in-game.
WIth the game’s reliance on resources
produced externally – Google Streetview images – GeoGuessr is a particularly thought-provoking
case study for looking into the range of power relationships that influence how
landscapes are represented in games, and through digital media more generally.
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For academics, designers, and
others with an interest in how we understand what places are when apprehended
through digital technology, it will be instructive to see how these
relationships are negotiated as GeoGuessr evolves in the coming months and years.
Notably, in November, the game’s developers took to Twitter to ask players for
ideas on new features to include, and how the existing gameplay could be
improved. There has since been a considerable number of suggestions that, if
implemented, could substantially change how the game is played.
In the same way that the
evolution of Google Streetview has, exploring environments virtually through
GeoGuessr provokes questions about what it means to locate and be located in
the digital age. Where the game has been most innovative is in turning this
relatively new medium of representing place into an experience that, through
its very design, enables players to learn about unfamiliar places by taking
their own journeys through series of images, making discoveries and
interpretations based on their own perceptions. Where GeoGuessr has
limitations, these tend to lie with the Streetview images themselves, and how
they are produced, rather than the gameplay. However, the way images are
assigned via the game’s algorithm is a pertinent consideration to make when considering
how well the game encourages personal discovery and learning about locations.
With forthcoming improvements seemingly
on the horizon, it will be intriguing to see how the game’s design branches out
from the initial concept, and the effects of future changes on how players make
sense of the screened representations of places they encounter through the
game.
