I came across GeoGuessr yesterday and sent it around the office this morning as a bit of Friday fun - we have a room full of consultants and technologists who use maps and photographic representations of places as part of their day to day work and so it’s interesting to observe how they’ve been detecting where the locations are when the mapping element is absent.

So far, comments I’ve heard have been:

“ooh, a sign for Victoria Bitter, must be in Australia” - It was

“Ah, the sea, and a sign in Portuguese - that could be Portugal, or it could be South America” - It was Brazil

“A tourist map on the wall of the hut, fantastic, that’ll help. Now what country are we in?” - It was Nova Scotia

“They drive on the left, there is sunshine, must be Australia” - It was (though Australia is a really, really big place)

“Now is that kanji or Hangul” - it was kanji, it was somewhere in Japan

Without the mapping element, people have been looking at the imagery in much greater detail, “walking” around the area, looking for street signs, shop names, the people and the general environment. Like I say, really interesting to observe. Oh, and my best score so far is 12188.