Argobot

GeoGuessr

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http://geoguessr.com/

 

I saw Darius Kazemi describe this game as "what 'Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego' must have been like before the Internet." It's such a simple idea (guess which part of the world the picture was taken) but it's completely captivating. See how good you are at guessing geographical locations based on very limited clues. Also, when in doubt, always pick Australia or Nova Scotia.

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My best score

 

Reminds me of something I did in college with some friends of mine.  I took famous works of art, altered them slightly, then tried to see if my friends could figure out what they were.  I also took famous pieces of classical music and movie scores and clipped sections that were not famous (such as any part of Beethoven's 5th that not the opening).  Basically, my goal was to have them guess things that (at the time) couldn't be easily looked up with a quick Google search.

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I saw JP LeBreton tweet about this and immediately took up an hour of my time. I really want the experience of discovering one's environment through contextual clues in a video game, which is why I'm pumped about Gone Home. 

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My mate Dave posted it on Facebook last week and we played it few a bit

I didn't realise until about my 3rd game that you could actually move along the road, as in I thought you were stuck in a fixed location. At lot of them seem to be right on the coast

My best guess was 150km away (it was near hong kong)

It's a shame it's completely random as you can't properly play against someone.

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Asian locations are difficult :)

 

I find the Asian locations easiest. There's usually a sign around, so you can narrow it down at least to Japan, Korea, etc. by the type of writing used. The first location I got was the gate with the pair of Shisa, so I immediately knew to go to Okinawa. I ended up being like 4km off.

It's the North American ones that are getting me, because they're all so samey and familiar that I always just try either Atlantic Canada or New Mexico. Also the Alaskan one that's just a dirt road in the middle of the woods is complete bullshit.

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My BF got one that was just the inside of a nondescript classroom. I don't remember where it ended up being, probably Australia.

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I saw JP LeBreton tweet about this and immediately took up an hour of my time. I really want the experience of discovering one's environment through contextual clues in a video game, which is why I'm pumped about Gone Home. 

Yeah, that stuff is the best.  I figured one of mine out because I saw a tour bus which said "Kiwis" on it, which I knew to mean it was in or near New Zealand.  Another I got because I saw the Overseas Highway, which I'm not too proud to admit I recognized by sight from the movie True Lies.

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Batter-rasies

i have just discovered that he actually says battery Aziz. The main bad guy is called Aziz. Mind blown. i thought it was just a funny Arab way of saying batteries :) oh how we fucking loled about this in school

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Wow, in one of the guesses I just got a road in the middle of nowhere... I went down a road until I saw a house... It looked European and I was right! The final guess was in my home country... and it said the name of county, were they supposed to censor this?

 

I guess i did well? http://www.geoguessr.com?v=eyJ0b........TRdXX0%3D

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I find the Asian locations easiest. There's usually a sign around, so you can narrow it down at least to Japan, Korea, etc. by the type of writing used. The first location I got was the gate with the pair of Shisa, so I immediately knew to go to Okinawa. I ended up being like 4km off.

It's the North American ones that are getting me, because they're all so samey and familiar that I always just try either Atlantic Canada or New Mexico. Also the Alaskan one that's just a dirt road in the middle of the woods is complete bullshit.

I can't reproduce the characters on those signs, that's why it's difficult.

 

The easiest spot I had was right in front of a canadian post office that had the name, state and country posted on the first spot. I usually end up looking for road signs or restaurant names. But even with a lot of info, you can still end up in Australia rather than the US

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Pursued did the whole "figure out where you are after being plopped down into Google street view" thing back in February of this year.

 

I had a very similar experience with both, but GeoGuessr is a lot cleaner. Clicking on a map is so much more intuitive than typing the name of a city (which may be mispelled, have regional variations) and gives good, analog feedback on how close your guess was. I also appreciate how much less stressful it is to play without a constantly ticking timer. The random starting locations also give it more longevity than Pursued's set of premade dev and user levels.

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Wow, nice score elmuerte. I got around 11000 But I also got some easy ones where there were signs near.

 

[Edit] 18000 The one I missed I thought was some kind of Russian coastal place, but there are so many... so I put it randomly in Norway or Sweden. Turned out to be half across the world.

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It's okay to fail people! It's alright. You are a beautiful human being and I love you. Just relax, take a breath. No one expects anything from you. You don't owe anything to anyone. So just look at that dirt road and have a guess and know I'm here next to you.

Hug

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Just out of curiosity, are you guys actually looking up the things you see to figure it out, or are you just guessing without any outside help?

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Just out of curiosity, are you guys actually looking up the things you see to figure it out, or are you just guessing without any outside help?

 

Guessing with no outside help. Using the internet kind of defeats the whole point of this game, I think.

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I'm looking up stuff, because it's like an adventure game.

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When you get a road in the middle of nowhere, how far are willing to go to find a clue? Sometimes the Google Maps images don't have a high enough resolution to be able to read the signs, but at least if you find a house you can take a guess by it's architecture?

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I've played this game twice so far, and both times it has dropped me in situations where you can't move the camerand explore the environment.  First I was in some nondescript field that turned out to be somewhere in Greece (I went with Belarus), and just now I was on the deck of a cruise ship called Serenity.  Weird.

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A few interesting things I've come upon while playing this:

 

- Seeing the word 'Microsleep' in Australian signage warning that it can kill me.

- I can't tell the difference between Western Australia and the American Southwest. There's a town called Mt. Magnet that has a few storefronts with an American West facade. I assume it's American West as I don't know much about the history of Australia. Maybe they had their own version of it.

- After figuring out a place was in America due to signage and suburbs with ranch homes, I was also able to figure out it's location in the Wyoming, Kansas, Dakotas area due to some makeshift, pro-life billboards.

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Microsleeps: the road safety campaign. The spokesperson is a well-known science entertainer here, like a Bill Nye or what have you.

 

Apparently you have microsleeps overseas as well, just not a road safety campaign based on it.

 

(Advertising agencies in Australia see PSA campaigns as an opportunity to show off.)

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