Introduction
On July 12, 2026, I took part in the Tsubata Town Esports Festa 2026 .
The KIT eSports Project, for which I serve as an advisor, had a booth at the event, and I attended with the students.
We exhibited GeoGuessr, a game in which players use Google Street View scenery to work out where they are.
We expected that many visitors would be from Tsubata.
With that in mind, we created a custom map featuring only locations within the town.
Alongside the hands-on booth, we also held a stage event in which Tsubata Town officials competed against residents.
Not everything went smoothly.
Even so, what stayed with me after the event was not so much the frustration of our mistakes as the potential I saw in bringing communities and esports together.
Local Knowledge Makes You Strong
The stage event featured matches between Tsubata Town officials and residents using our custom map.
We had planned a handicap for the officials because we expected them to know the area well.
However, after recovering from a connection error, we ran into a problem where the player settings had been swapped.
There were lessons for us as organizers, but the officials ultimately won every match.
Instead of naming someone who had beaten an official as the winner, we awarded first place to the resident who had dealt the most damage to an official’s HP.
Knowledge of the local area became a form of strength within the game.
The matches let me see that happen firsthand.
What left the strongest impression on me was that some of the officials came to our hands-on booth after the stage event had finished.
When the booth had a free moment, they started competing against each other.
One of them repeatedly pinpointed the locations almost exactly.
In GeoGuessr terms, they kept scoring 5Ks: perfect scores.
The official commented that the game seemed well suited to recreation among people who were expected to know the town, especially if everyone could make comments from the sidelines while they played.
It was about more than finding the right location.
“I know where this is.”
“I’ve been down this road before.”
I think the conversations that could only happen among people familiar with the area became part of the game itself.
Scenery Brings Back Memories
Many of the children who visited the hands-on booth appeared to be in the early years of elementary school.
For younger children, using the mouse was difficult before they could even begin thinking about the location.
Simply explaining how to move through Street View took time.
Preparing a game does not mean everyone can immediately take part.
The experience needs to be designed for its participants, including how they first learn the controls.
At the same time, I was struck by the reactions of parents looking at the screen with their children.
One father looked at the scenery and told his child, “We’ve been there” and “We’ve driven down this road before.”
When people hear about using GeoGuessr for local learning, they may imagine teaching materials designed to help students memorize local landmarks and facilities.
A map could feature well-known places in the area as part of social studies or geography.
It could also include places people should know for daily life and safety, such as the police station near a school.
Those uses are certainly possible.
What interested me most this time, however, was not simply the memorization of facts.
Looking at familiar scenery brought out people’s experiences and memories of time spent in the area.
“We’ve been there.”
“We’ve driven down this road before.”
Through conversations like these, children come to know their community.
For the adults, it also becomes a chance to look back on their own relationship with the area.
This is about more than making study enjoyable through a game.
The game creates conversation, and I think that conversation itself becomes learning.
Learning Together, Not Just Teaching
The kind of “education” I saw in this experience was slightly different from one person delivering the correct knowledge to everyone else.
Parents know the places they have visited with their families.
Town officials know the area through their work.
Residents carry memories of living there.
Sometimes a child may notice a clue in the scenery before any of the adults do.
The roles of teacher and learner do not need to be fixed in advance.
Everyone present can bring their own knowledge and memories.
When the question changes, so does the person who knows the answer.
The mayor also tried GeoGuessr and suggested that it could be interesting when combined with education.
I see the same potential.
A local GeoGuessr map could be more than teaching material for learning about an area. It could also become a place where people in the community learn from one another.
As a result, they may come to know their community more deeply and feel a stronger attachment to it.
Why Competition Matters
It is also worth considering why local learning through GeoGuessr should be presented specifically as esports.
The Japan Esports Union (JeSU) explains esports as a term used when competition through computer and video games is regarded as sporting competition.
Our event also involved competition.
Rather than simply listening to an explanation of the area, players had to observe the scenery, search for clues, and decide where they were.
Competing to find the answer encouraged participants to engage actively with the town.
They could enjoy taking part even when they made mistakes.
The preamble to Japan’s Basic Act on Sport, quoted in a Japan Sports Agency document , describes sport as something that promotes interaction between people and regions while fostering unity and vitality within communities.
What I saw was different from a large competitive tournament.
Even so, people gathering for a match and talking about their community overlapped with this social dimension of sport.
At the same time, a game and a local map are not enough to complete a competitive event.
We discovered practical issues only by running it: preparing for connection errors, explaining the controls to beginners, and arranging seats so that players could not see each other’s screens.
The experience itself needs to be designed around the age of the participants and whether the event places greater emphasis on interaction or competition.
Drawing a Crowd So the Work Can Continue
Beyond competition, esports can also bring people together as an event.
Even an activity with educational value is difficult to sustain when it depends entirely on unpaid labor.
Participants do not necessarily need to be charged directly. Drawing a crowd can demonstrate the value of an activity and may lead to municipal funding or corporate sponsorship.
Visitors using the venue and nearby businesses may also generate spending within the area.
For participants, an enjoyable experience gives them a reason to return.
For organizers, attracting people can make it easier to secure the support needed to continue.
The idea of learning through play may do more than make learning approachable. I think it may also help an activity last.
It is not enough for something to be only fun or only educational.
The value of using esports may lie in its ability to be both.
Conclusion
The event left us with several lessons about its operation.
Even so, after it ended, I was not looking only at what had gone wrong.
I remembered the officials competing against each other after the stage event.
I remembered the father looking at the screen with his child and talking about their experiences in the area.
What emerged there was more than the act of finding the correct location. It was conversation about the community.
People can play and compete while listening to someone else’s memories.
They can share what they know.
They can gradually learn more about the place where they live.
Can esports help communities learn together?
One event is not enough to answer that question.
But there is still so much left to try.
That possibility has me genuinely excited.