1214: Geoguessr

|< < Prev Comic #1214 (May 20, 2013) Next > >|

Geoguessr

Title text: I'm not sure if you can get Epcot, but my friend just got LegoLand. He guessed California but it was the one in Denmark. Meanwhile, I'm rapidly becoming a connoisseur of unmarked dirt roads over flat, barren landscapes.

Explanation

Geoguessr is a game in which the player is given a location in Google Street View and asked to guess precisely where in the world they are, by clicking on a map of the world, based only on the 360 degree view in the Street View display.

Cueball is upset because he keeps making his guesses based on landmarks and his guesses end up being wrong because the landmark he based his guess off of was actually a replica of the real one.

Of course, from a statistical perspective, this makes sense: For every famous object, there are countless replicas, and the vast majority of famous objects (except a few notable works of art) exist in only one place in the world. Take the Statue of Liberty, for instance, which has hundreds of replicas all over the planet.

However, as the alt text alludes to, you're far more likely to find a dirt road than to find anything recognizable, since Google Street View maps roads more than anything else (hence its name).

Anyone who's ever played with Geoguessr knows, also, that seemingly helpful clues can sometimes be useless. For instance, if you recognize Japanese characters on a sign, the nation of Japan actually encompasses an enormous area, so unless you can recognize a specific region, there's no obvious place to guess where you can hope to get high points. (Unlike somewhere like England, where guessing London is guaranteed to put you within reasonable distance from a global perspective.) Legoland is a good example of this: If you can't tell if you're in Denmark or California, it's not like you can just guess halfway between and do well.

Transcript

Cueball:THis one's easy;There's the Parthenon.Athens

*CLICK*

Cueball:What!Why the heall there is a Parthenon in Nashville?

*CLICK*

Cueball:OK,I am clearly in Germany.

*CLICK*

Cueball:Dammit,Germany Pavillion at Epcot.

My scores in Geoguessr would be higher if people quit building replicas of everything.

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

Not only have Statue of liberty lots of replicas, also the original is in Paris. On the other hand, I don't suppose you can mistake the original with New York replica give the size difference. -- Hkmaly (talk) 08:17, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you're getting that from, but the original Statue of Liberty is the one in New York. It was assembled in paris, but not as a copy of any prior existing sculpture. -- Zuffelnok (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Here is a list of replicas: Replicas of the Statue of Liberty. So it seems the original is that one in New York.--Dgbrt (talk) 18:33, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

In the Jardin du Luxembourg section of that page it states that it is the 'first' that the artist used as a model for the full size version in New York, this is probably what Hkmaly is referring to. lcarsos_a (talk) 20:20, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

There were models before that statue was build. But no one was big as the present to the United States. Nevertheless it's correct, the first one is not standing at NYC. And without that statue at NYC we all would not know it.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Not to belabor the point, but a model of something is not that thing. A model used as a guide in the construction of a statue is not the statue itself, any more than the mock-up of a stage setting is not the stage setting itself or the pseudo-code for a program is the program. The original Statue of Liberty is in New York - the model is simple an artifact resembling the Statue of Liberty. -- [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]]) (please sign your comments with ~~~~) 6 May 2013

But a model is still a statue nonetheless. It is still the original statue of liberty regardless of its size. The biggest one isn't automatically the "official" version of that thing, and the first was more than simply a rough draft, but a real work of art that took time and skill. 172.251.86.161 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This is just a semantic argument. I believe the "original" point was that not everything that looks like the statue of liberty is a replica. Some predate it. That's not what replica means to me. The original model was a bunch of firing neurons in the artist's brain. The big one is the famous one. Still, it's not fair to call the ones that came before it replicas. 173.245.63.198 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This is my new favourite edit war.108.162.242.21 14:11, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

So by being in the same country you get a few thousand points. But, then I got an easy one because the street view showed a restaurant called Vila Cha, and sure enough TripAdvisor took me to Vila Cha in Campos Do Jordao in Sao Paolo, Brazil. I double checked in a separate tab the street view of the area, and I hit the point 0.023km off, and got "only" 6477 points. For the difficulty of the game, I'd think you'd get 5 digit scores for that at least. Uctriton00 (talk) 15:59, 20 May 2013 (UTC) uctriton00

I got the point 4 meters off, and only got about 6.5k points. --DiEvAl (talk) 20:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I got one metre off, and earned 6479 points. Big cruise ship in port + giant "Welcome to Ketchikan" sign = easily Google-Maps-able location. Really, anything within about a kilometre gives near enough to the (apparent) maximum score so as to not make a difference... --Belthazar (talk) 09:57, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

"if you recognize Japanese characters on a sign, the nation of Japan actually encompasses an enormous area, so unless you can recognize a specific region, there's no obvious place to guess where you can hope to get high points. (Unlike somewhere like England, where guessing London is guaranteed to put you within reasonable distance from a global perspective.)" -- Japan is about three times as big as England, so I wouldn't say that Japan is "enormous" in comparison. Furthermore, since the part about Japan refers to recognition of Japanese characters, this would be equivalent to connecting signs in English to England, which apparently is not the most obvious conclusion. Jolindbe (talk) 19:26, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Nation != Country. I once had an island somewhere in the Indian Ocean where everything was in Japanese. I don't remember what it was called though. --DiEvAl (talk) 20:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

"For every famous object, there are countless replicas, and the vast majority of famous objects (...) exist in only one place in the world".  ??? Someone might need to clarify the meaning here, as this reads as self-contradictory to me. Also, can I guess Legoland Windsor as being (very inaccurately) half way between Billund and wherever the California one is? ;) 178.99.247.73 20:41, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the original wording was grammatically ambiguous and confusing. I've submitted an edit I hope clarifies the intended meaning. --141.101.98.63 01:59, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Actually, if people quit building replicas, Cueball's score would stay the same. To actually make his score higher, people would have to go and actually destroy some replicas, or wait for them to fall into ruin. All of this assumes that Cueball isn't getting any better with practice, and isn't playing often enough to where he's actually seen the replicas enough to recognize them... 76.26.147.222 04:35, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Am I the only person here who had no idea what Epcot was? 203.206.118.14 02:21, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Go here EPCOT--145.253.244.103 06:49, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Is it possible that the use of "connoisseur" (as opposed to, say, "expert") in the alt text is intended to reference Connoisseur? --Belthazar (talk) 09:57, 23 May 2013 (UTC)