How Geoguesser Ruined My Life

The other day after training I was talking to some of the guys on my ski team. We were talking about geography and they asked me if my teacher had us play a game called "Geoguesser" yet. I said no and asked them what it was. They told me it was a game that dropped you in a random place in the world and then you had to guess where you were on a map. You are able to spin around and see a full 360˚ view of where you are and sometimes it will let you move forward and backwards. You can choose if you want to be dropped anywhere in the world (this option will literally drop you in the middle of nowhere) or only famous places (Rome, London, New York, etc.) or even just the US. It also gives you the ability to challenge other people to see who can get closer to the exact location. I thought it sounded interesting and I said I was going to go home and try it.

A picture of their home screen. Photo courtesy of me from the geoguesser website

A picture of the actual game... Leave a comment if you know where this is. Photo courtesy of me from the Geoguesser website

I forgot about it until the next day when my friend (Victoria) came in to Pre-engineering telling me about how addicting it was. So, naturally I had to play it. Now I would just like to state that I am not usually the kind of person who plays games during class or games in general. Anyway I decided to try it. I was instantly addicted. We played it for the first fifteen minutes of class, until the sub came over and chewed us out for playing games during class. We had had two assignments that we were supposed to do, one was a project proposal and the other was to design something in SketchUp. Victoria and I really wanted to get back to playing the game, but we knew we couldn't until we finished all of our work. So, we decided to race to see who could finish the assignments (the best) first. We ended up finishing quickly and went back to the game. The sub came over again and chewed us out for playing the game again, but we told him we finished all our work and he left us alone.  About ten minutes later the sub came back over to watch us play and give "advice". His advice was terrible. I was dropped in stonehenge for one round of the game. I thought it was in Scotland, but the sub kept telling me it was in Southeast Asia. *Side note, Stonehenge is in England. Then, I was dropped in the Vatican. I was like "I think I'm in the Vatican" and the sub told me "Um that's definitely not the Vatican". I didn't really believe him, so I guessed the Vatican anyway. Low and behold I was right, I was in the Vatican. 

Then came next period. We had to take a test on our computers and we could do whatever we wanted after. That's right you guessed it... I played more geoguesser. While I was playing the kids behind me started asking what I was doing. I told them I was playing geoguesser and it was like the most addicting game ever. Then they started playing too. This was when I realized I liked the game so much, I started spreading it. 

I didn't get a chance to play it again until I got home. When I got home I realized that you could challenge people to games, but you had to create an account. I hate creating accounts for things, like if I download an app, but you have to create an account for it. I usually just delete the app. For some reason this was different, I wanted to challenge people, so I created an account. That night, I challenged two of my friends, my dad, my brother and my mom. I ended up spending the whole night competing with my friends and dad. It got super intense my friend and I ended up creating rules like no using google, no getting help and even time limits. The same friend and I even ended up competing to see how close we could get to the exact location. You might be thinking "Isn't that the point of the game". Yes it is, but this was different we were trying to as close as possible down to the nearest meter. I also ended up face timing with one of my other friends and playing with her for over an hour. By this point I was literally putting off homework to play this game. 

My record: 7.5 meters from the location on the map... I'm pretty impressed with myself :) Photo courtesy of moi

The next morning my friend Laisa, texted me asking if I had looked at canvas for our french class yet. I responded no and went to check it. She asked me if I saw "it" yet and even though I didn't see "it" I responded with oh my gosh anyway because I was clearly missing something. She text me back saying "I was sitting there reading it and I was like I wonder if Mrs. Hurner (our teacher) even told Claire". I was sitting there like wait, did she even tell me what? I went back and looked at canvas and it said "Claire is responsible for coordinating this effort". If you were wondering, no she did not tell me this. I got into class and the sub asked me if I was Claire O. I replied and yes and he started going over the lesson with me and I was like hold on what's happening. Apparently I was supposed to help the sub. I honestly tried for the first ten minutes of class, but then I kept getting sassed by these 8th graders, so I gave up. 

That was when I got an email for a geoguesser challenge. So, I accepted. That was a terrible mistake. My teacher tells the sub that I am supposed to help him and I just sat there playing geoguesser all period. It got to a point where there was a big geoguesser challenge going between half the class. This was the point where I officially accepted the fact that geoguesser has ruined my life. 

That is the story of how geoguesser ruined my life. I have the game linked in multiple places including here, so you should really give it a try. Or actually maybe not, just warning you it's addicting. 

- Claire