You might not know the name Mapper, but it’s the moniker of a prolific game designer… in a sense. Mapper is responsible for millions of hours of fun thanks to his contributions to Geoguessr, the Google Maps based game where you have to figure out where in the world you are. It’s a deceptively simple game with a whole host of hard work behind the scenes to make it run smoothly.
Nearly all of Geoguessr’s maps are community-made. While the website itself created the standard ‘World’ map, makes new game modes, and hosts these community maps, most people don’t play the former. The World map includes every location on Google Maps, so you can end up in an indescribable forest where you can’t move or see any road signs to give you hints. Places with dense populations like Singapore or European cities are also overrepresented, so you’ll see more of them in your rounds.
The original Geoguesser map just doesn’t cut it any more. The most popular map in recent years has been A Diverse World, created by Mapper. Community-made maps are the lifeblood of the game, and Mapper has a talent for perfectly balancing his creations. A Diverse World is, exactly as its name suggests, incredibly diverse. You’ll see more far-flung places and beaten tracks than in most other maps, and yet every answer feels gettable. There’s always a road leading to a town or a storefront with a phone number. If you’re a good enough player, these hints will be more than enough to help you achieve victory. And if you’re not, it’s time to get learning which phone number extension belongs to which country.
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A Diverse World is what led players to learn the difference between road bollards in Finland and Sweden. It forced players to adapt to subtle variations in flora, and to realise that tape on the front right roof bar on the Google car meant that you were definitely in Ghana. If you’re just starting out, my top tip is to learn the flags of the world and the cyrillic alphabet before you start on these niche cases, but the top players use every tiny piece of information at their disposal to get ridiculous scores in baffling times.
Fast forward to this week, and Mapper has deleted A Diverse World. The creator accompanied the news with a detailed explanation, letting disappointed players know that their decision has been forced by money-grabbing and anti-consumer changes to the website from new management. The most notable recipient of their ire are the new avatars that add microtransactions to the game.
The avatars are a little egregious, and Mapper believes them to be a sign of the changes to their beloved website. Many players agree, saying that the avatars and money-making changes have made the website sluggish to use, with lag affecting their gameplay and crashes becoming more frequent. Others don’t begrudge Geoguessr for trying to earn some cash, especially seeing as the subscription price hasn’t been raised from the very reasonable £1 a month.
Mapper blames investors Spotify, H&M, and especially Candy Crush developer King, for the changes which have hurt the game. “Geoguessr’s managers don’t care about you any more,” they wrote. “Now they only care about your wallet.”
Mapper is pulling all of their content in protest of the changes. They’re deleting their account, cancelling their subscription, and, crucially, deleting their maps. They do mention that they’re thinking about porting A Diverse World over to Geoguessr clone GeoHub, but note that there are significant problems that come with this, not least the fact that it uses Google’s free API, meaning that if the site reaches critical mass of users, it will become inaccessible for the rest of the month due to the limits imposed by Google. However, Mapper has a plan for that, too.
“[GeoHub] can be rehosted by anyone using their own API key, allowing a decentralized ecosystem to exist.”
It remains to be seen whether Mapper’s dreams of a user-run Geoguessr can exist without the funding and team of devs that the original provides, but their goal of a game free from capitalist practices and bloating features is certainly noble. A decentralised Geoguessr could be the first in a long line of gaming co-operatives. Players are the most valuable resource for games, after all, so a player-owned, -run, and -maintained website could be a utopian place free from microtransactions and battle passes. It’s more complicated than that of course, as it would need some form of funding (I assume donations) in order to function, but Mapper could be the force behind a revolution. If not, in the words of the Diverse World creator themself, “it was fun while it lasted.”