THE CLOSER YOU CLICK, THE HIGHER YOU SCORE | The GeoGuessr game looks deceptively simple but, according to one avid player, 鈥渞equires a lot of work and research.鈥欌�� )SCREENGRAB FROM GEOGUESSR.COM)
STOCKHOLM 鈥� The world鈥檚 best gamers who can identify a location anywhere in the world after seeing an image in less than a second face-off on Saturday in a world championship in Stockholm.
A picture of a sunny paved road appears on a computer screen, bordered by trees and bushes. A red dirt road crosses the paved road, in what appears to be a tropical landscape.
鈥淲e鈥檙e going to be in Indonesia because of the sticker on this pole,鈥� Trevor Rainbolt of the United States tells Agence France-Presse (AFP).
He clicks on the map and selects what appears to be a random location in Indonesia.
Bingo 鈥� he鈥檚 just 88 kilometers (55 miles) from the actual spot.
Rainbolt, a fast-talking computer geek, is one of the biggest stars in the game community for his uncanny ability to determine the location of a Google Maps picture in a tenth of a second 鈥� less than the blink of an eye.
An AFP reporter watching him play is barely able to see the image in that amount of time, much less guess the country, city, or village.
鈥淚t requires a lot of work and research,鈥� Rainbolt admits. 鈥淒uring the pandemic, I played around 18 hours a day.鈥�
Dropped somewhere
Created by the Swedish trio Anton Wallen, Daniel Antell, and Erland Ranvinge, GeoGuessr was born on May 10, 2013, when it was published on a popular platform for coders.
The idea is simple: a player is dropped somewhere in the world on Google Maps鈥� Street View and has to guess where he is.
He puts his cursor on the world map and clicks on the location he thinks is correct. The closer the player is to the real spot, the more points he gets.
鈥淢y friend Anton was playing around with the application programming interface that Google released publicly, so he made a small game and put it on Reddit,鈥� Antell told AFP.
鈥淭hen it went viral.鈥�
On Saturday, 24 players from around the world compete in Stockholm in the first official world championship organized by GeoGuessr, with a $50,000 prize pool.
Some 500 spectators are expected, according to event host Space.
That鈥檚 small in the gaming world: the 2022 League of Legends world championship finals was watched by 18,000 live spectators in San Francisco and around 5 million others online.
GeoGuessr has flourished into a company with sales of 200 million kronor ($18 million), with Antell as chief executive.
But neither the company nor the players seem too concerned about whether the game becomes an official esport.
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Like detective work
It鈥檚 different from other esports in that 鈥渋t鈥檚 more accessible,鈥� with both a free and a premium version, explained Wallen.
It鈥檚 also frequently played by kids and in schools.
The game now has 65 million registered users worldwide. Top players have a range of clues and tips they use to help them identify locations, after hours spent scrutinizing pictures online.
These can be black dots on Argentinian license plates, ground markings in Greece, vegetation or the color of the soil in Africa, or even the position of the camera on Google鈥檚 cars, which is lower in Sri Lanka and Japan for privacy reasons.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a bit of detective work, you have to put all the puzzle pieces together to figure out where you are,鈥� says Mattias McCullin who is representing Sweden in the championship.
The game has made Rainbolt want to see the world in real life.
Last year, he went to Botswana. 鈥淲ould I have ever gone to Botswana before I started playing this game? Absolutely not,鈥� he said.
鈥淚 have this newfound love for these countries, that I wouldn鈥檛 have had without this game.鈥�