![TREVOR RAINBOLT (via the GeoGuessr World Cup Grand Finale): Consus! The first official GeoGuessr World Champion. He did it from the qualifiers. He’s done it! He’s done it! GABE SHUMWAY: That was the culmination of GeoGuessr’s first-ever World Cup event. But what is GeoGuessr? It’s a video game you play using Google Maps, where you’re placed in a random Google Street View location and must guess where you are. You may recognize it from your TikTok For You page, where someone happened to guess Brazil based on the red soil. It may be something that you played with your friends, determined to find out where you were. But what makes this game so appealing? What is causing this surge in worldwide popularity? Today we set out to find the answers behind GeoGuessr’s meteoric rise. SPENCER McLAUGHLIN: I’m somebody who really likes geography, really likes maps. As somebody who kind of likes to think that I at least have a decent view of what the world looks like and what different parts of the world look like, this is literally just examining how well you know the world. EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: That’s Spencer McLaughlin, a Weinberg freshman here at Northwestern. He was initially drawn to the game through a YouTube video he watched nearly ten years ago. Even though he played the game in a history class, it never stuck until the pandemic. During this time, he picked it up again and began playing with friends regularly. Ryan Almeida is a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies at Hamilton College. He chose to become the faculty advisor of Hamilton’s GeoGuessr Club after falling in love with the game under similar circumstances. RYAN ALMEIDA: I really picked it back up during the pandemic – probably it was 2021-ish when I really got back into it. And I think a lot of people got into GeoGuessr during that time in part due to wanderlust and sort of not being able to travel. SHUMWAY: McLaughlin started a geography club at his New Jersey high school that quickly took to GeoGuessr as a form of entertainment. As the club gained popularity, the game became more competitive among its members. McLAUGHLIN: We had, like, a March Madness-style bracket where everyone could compete. We also had, like, when we were playing casually, a leaderboard system, where we had this really complicated Excel spreadsheet where you would put in your scores for individual games and it would give you like an ELO or, like, a rating for your place in the club. SHUMWAY: These competitions also take place at the college level, with schools competing virtually. Hamilton’s GeoGuessr Club has both hosted and attended various collegiate competitions centered on the game. ALMEIDA: You have two people per team. Each person places a guess where they think it is on the map, and then whichever guess is closest to the spot gets the most points and the highest score from each team is subtracted. And so the difference represents sort of the score for that round, and people are given a set amount of health. And so if one team gets 4,000 points, the other team gets 3,000 points, the losing team will subtract 1,000 points from the score. CRUZ: And last year, the world’s greatest GeoGuessr players gathered in Stockholm, Sweden, for the first-ever GeoGuessr World Cup, which ended with Patrick Noordijk, known as Consus, being crowned as the eventual champion. This year’s World Cup is already underway, with regional finals for the Americas taking place this weekend. Europe and Asia will have their own regional finals before the top 24 players globally square off in the two-day grand finale this September. But even if you’re not a pro at identifying random spots around the world, you can still find something to enjoy in GeoGuessr. ALMEIDA: There’s quite a diversity in the way students and folks approach how they’re going to figure out where they are. Some people clue straight into something like vegetation or the biome they exist in, right, looking for whether the trees look tropical or whether it looks like an arid climate or whether it looks relatively temperate. Folks can be really interested in looking for things like architecture or potential language clues, right, and I think a lot of that just has to do with sort of what people naturally gravitate to when they’re playing. And so I think one of the fun things about GeoGuessr is there's not really sort of one of those things that trumps the other, right. You really do need to sort of have this holistic view of the world. [music] SHUMWAY: For WNUR News, I’m Gabe Shumway. CRUZ: And I’m Edward Simon Cruz. Audio of Trevor Rainbolt taken from 2023 GeoGuessr World Cup: Grand Final Day](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_webp,q_glossy,ret_img,w_800,h_449/https://wnurnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/geostorypic-Gabe-Shumway-scaled.jpg)
TREVOR RAINBOLT (via the GeoGuessr World Cup Grand Finale): Consus! The first official GeoGuessr World Champion. He did it from the qualifiers. He’s done it! He’s done it!
GABE SHUMWAY: That was the culmination of GeoGuessr’s first-ever World Cup event. But what is GeoGuessr? It’s a video game you play using Google Maps, where you’re placed in a random Google Street View location and must guess where you are.
You may recognize it from your TikTok For You page, where someone happened to guess Brazil based on the red soil. It may be something that you played with your friends, determined to find out where you were.
But what makes this game so appealing? What is causing this surge in worldwide popularity? Today we set out to find the answers behind GeoGuessr’s meteoric rise.
SPENCER McLAUGHLIN: I’m somebody who really likes geography, really likes maps. As somebody who kind of likes to think that I at least have a decent view of what the world looks like and what different parts of the world look like, this is literally just examining how well you know the world.
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: That’s Spencer McLaughlin, a Weinberg freshman here at Northwestern. He was initially drawn to the game through a YouTube video he watched nearly ten years ago. Even though he played the game in a history class, it never stuck until the pandemic. During this time, he picked it up again and began playing with friends regularly.
Ryan Almeida is a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies at Hamilton College. He chose to become the faculty advisor of Hamilton’s GeoGuessr Club after falling in love with the game under similar circumstances.
RYAN ALMEIDA: I really picked it back up during the pandemic – probably it was 2021-ish when I really got back into it. And I think a lot of people got into GeoGuessr during that time in part due to wanderlust and sort of not being able to travel.
SHUMWAY: McLaughlin started a geography club at his New Jersey high school that quickly took to GeoGuessr as a form of entertainment. As the club gained popularity, the game became more competitive among its members.
McLAUGHLIN: We had, like, a March Madness-style bracket where everyone could compete. We also had, like, when we were playing casually, a leaderboard system, where we had this really complicated Excel spreadsheet where you would put in your scores for individual games and it would give you like an ELO or, like, a rating for your place in the club.
SHUMWAY: These competitions also take place at the college level, with schools competing virtually. Hamilton’s GeoGuessr Club has both hosted and attended various collegiate competitions centered on the game.
ALMEIDA: You have two people per team. Each person places a guess where they think it is on the map, and then whichever guess is closest to the spot gets the most points and the highest score from each team is subtracted. And so the difference represents sort of the score for that round, and people are given a set amount of health. And so if one team gets 4,000 points, the other team gets 3,000 points, the losing team will subtract 1,000 points from the score.
CRUZ: And last year, the world’s greatest GeoGuessr players gathered in Stockholm, Sweden, for the first-ever GeoGuessr World Cup, which ended with Patrick Noordijk, known as Consus, being crowned as the eventual champion.
This year’s World Cup is already underway, with regional finals for the Americas taking place this weekend. Europe and Asia will have their own regional finals before the top 24 players globally square off in the two-day grand finale this September.
But even if you’re not a pro at identifying random spots around the world, you can still find something to enjoy in GeoGuessr.
ALMEIDA: There’s quite a diversity in the way students and folks approach how they’re going to figure out where they are. Some people clue straight into something like vegetation or the biome they exist in, right, looking for whether the trees look tropical or whether it looks like an arid climate or whether it looks relatively temperate. Folks can be really interested in looking for things like architecture or potential language clues, right, and I think a lot of that just has to do with sort of what people naturally gravitate to when they’re playing. And so I think one of the fun things about GeoGuessr is there’s not really sort of one of those things that trumps the other, right. You really do need to sort of have this holistic view of the world.
[music]
SHUMWAY: For WNUR News, I’m Gabe Shumway.
CRUZ: And I’m Edward Simon Cruz.
Audio of Trevor Rainbolt taken from 2023 GeoGuessr World Cup: Grand Final Day
