I started playing Geoguessr’s ranked duels a few months ago and if not for a family vacation to break me free, might have fully disappeared into the game.

Caught myself studying online guides to bollard color and shape by region, what road stripe patterns correspond with each country, the different shapes of the lettering of most major languages… etc.

It’s such a fun way to spend 15-30 minutes a day, and it’s quite easy to see improvement in your skill in a short time.

That being said, watching the pros can be a little discouraging because they’ll even have things like the ridge lines of mountain ranges memorized, it’s insane to watch.

Watching the pros made me realize they are just playing a game of memory.

How else could one play the game except using memory of places, cultures, etc? Seems like the whole thing is memory and could only ever be memory...

I guess every piece of knowledge could be considered memory.

But I can see a difference between memorising the stripes on street furniture or which countries streetview has visited for the sake of playing such games and just knowing which direction the sun is to narrow down the hemisphere or having a little understanding of how the environment varies with latitude.

I particularly don't like the Geoguessr metas that are specific to Google Street View. In particular, expert Geoguessr players know about (1) which generation of imagery Google captured in which places (the quality gets higher over time), (2) which imaging artifacts are present from panorama stitching problems in which places (like "rifts" in the sky), (3) which kinds of cars were used where and what parts of the car you can see when you look down, and (4) which countries had a specific vehicle escort the Street View car.

I think the usefulness of these things is kind of sad because they are specifically about Google Street View rather than about the outside world. I would contrast that with something like utility poles, because while that's not exactly core cultural knowledge about a society, it's actually something that you would see for yourself if you were there. And it could potentially be interesting and useful in its own right. (For example, one might consider why particular countries adopted particular utility pole styles. Maybe they were faced with local insects or weather that damaged poles of a certain style, so they had to switch to a different kind?)

I suppose this happens in every competition. Its absolutely logical to try to game a system for a win.

You can usually look around for street signs or shop fronts that include useful information (a website that ends in .nz for example).

That's still memory, knowing that .nz is associated to new zeland?

This game is mostly memory + deduction (you see a few signs which when combined, result in only one possible location)

And a very good memory at that!! I’m pretty sure jeopardy is the same way.

How do the high scoring players of jeopardy do it? Do the memorize a book of facts or something? The mind boggles.

Even if they've personally visited every country in the world, wouldn't they still be playing a game of memory too?