My Big Brother
Encyclopedia
This article is about the game. For the episode of Scrubs
, see My Big Brother (Scrubs)
My Big Brother is a mobile game that emulates the Big Brother Brasil TV show in a cell phone using Java technology. It is the first game known (2005) to provide real time interaction between a mobile phone
and a television show.
My Big Brother (Meu Big Brother) was the first mobile game in Latin America to use GPRS connection to exchange data in a client-server scheme. The game turned out as a mobile content platform conceived to port the TV show’s events, moods and concepts to cellular phones, while allowing users to interact with the broadcast during polls, voting, popularity ratings etc.
Faced with the task of creating a mobile game to follow Brazilian's Big Brother TV series, the designer envisioned a game where the user had to select one of the actual houseguests as a 'pet' in the cellphone. The game connected to central servers and the pet actually performed, in real time, as the real houseguest in the show, thanks to a 24 hour content team that fed the servers with correlated behaviour. Everything that happened with the selected character in the TV show, live, happened to the representation in the mobile. Users could also interact with the show using the phone and changing the show’s outcome, as voting for evictions, leaders, and so on within the game environment. Picture it as a live tamagotchi
, tied to real life events, in a mobile phone
.
Designed to reproduce most of the reality show's drives and mechanics, the game links the user to a participant emulating the emotional tie found on the relation between television and public. Through that participant, the user reaches a unique view angle from the happenings inside the house and stay informed about everything concerning the show, in real-time. Since the game could be carried around in the user’s pocket to every place, 24 hours a day, it can be seen as the first ‘anytime, anywhere’ interactive television example from a technological standpoint. The user virtually carried the show with him wherever he went.
It is known that ‘My Big Brother’ was released in Australia
following the series in that country, but the Australian version was not capable of connecting to central servers. Rather, it just kept the ‘tamagotchi’ aspect of the game, thus not a real example of media convergence as the original one deployed in Brazil
in 2005.
Scrubs (TV series)
Scrubs is an American medical comedy-drama television series created in 2001 by Bill Lawrence and produced by ABC Studios. The show follows the lives of several employees of the fictional Sacred Heart, a teaching hospital. It features fast-paced screenplay, slapstick, and surreal vignettes...
, see My Big Brother (Scrubs)
My Big Brother is a mobile game that emulates the Big Brother Brasil TV show in a cell phone using Java technology. It is the first game known (2005) to provide real time interaction between a mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
and a television show.
The game
Faced with the task of creating a mobile game to follow Brazilian's Big Brother TV series, the designer envisioned a game where the user had to select one of the actual houseguests as a 'pet' in the cellphone. The game connected to central servers and the pet actually performed, in real time, as the real houseguest in the show, thanks to a 24 hour content team that fed the servers with correlated behaviour. Everything that happened with the selected character in the TV show, live, happened to the representation in the mobile. Users could also interact with the show using the phone and changing the show’s outcome, as voting for evictions, leaders, and so on within the game environment. Picture it as a live tamagotchi
Tamagotchi
The is a handheld digital pet, created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai. It was first sold by Bandai in 1996 in Japan. As of 2010, over 76 million Tamagotchis have been sold world-wide...
, tied to real life events, in a mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
.
Designed to reproduce most of the reality show's drives and mechanics, the game links the user to a participant emulating the emotional tie found on the relation between television and public. Through that participant, the user reaches a unique view angle from the happenings inside the house and stay informed about everything concerning the show, in real-time. Since the game could be carried around in the user’s pocket to every place, 24 hours a day, it can be seen as the first ‘anytime, anywhere’ interactive television example from a technological standpoint. The user virtually carried the show with him wherever he went.
It is known that ‘My Big Brother’ was released in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
following the series in that country, but the Australian version was not capable of connecting to central servers. Rather, it just kept the ‘tamagotchi’ aspect of the game, thus not a real example of media convergence as the original one deployed in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
in 2005.
See also
- GloboGloboGlobo may refer to*Organizações Globo, media conglomerate*Rede Globo, a television network in Brazil*Radio Globo, a radio station in Honduras...
- the Media Group / Broadcast company responsible for the game. - Big Brother Brasil - the Brazilian edition of Big Brother.
- Herois e vampirosHerois e vampirosHerois e Vampiros is a Brazilian online multiplayer trading card game, with a television convergence model originally broadcast by Globo TV.-The game:...
- an online game with media convergence aspects produced by Globo. - Henrique OlifiersHenrique OlifiersHenrique Olifiers is a Brazilian game designer specialized in creating media convergent game formats.-Career:Olifiers's last position in Brazil was as Head of Games at Globo TV. There he developed around 30 web-based games, some of them multiplayer, such as Thorvarium 1 and 2...
- lead game designer of 'My Big Brother'.