The Future is Here: You Could Win a Cow by Playing a Mobile Game
But you have to be in Tunisia to collect your prize.
Bagra (Arabic for “Cow”), recently released for iPhone and Android devices in the country, is a fast-paced smartphone and tablet game that finds players sucking up cattle into flying saucers while competing against online opponents. It looks like a rather silly diversion, to be honest, but one player’s alien abductions have really paid off.
According to news site Tuniscope (via Ars Technica), the game makers at DigitalMania sent a real live cow to the game’s top scorer last week. As far as we can tell, this is the very first time a live animal has been given away for skilled performance in a video game. Pamela, the creature in question, was corralled onto a rickety truck in front of cameras and carted off to its new home with an unnamed couple in the country. This is Pamela (pardon Facebook’s attempt at translating the caption):
Pamela won’t be the only cow awarded, either: Due to the success of the initial promotion, the creators plan to award another cow, named Brigitte, to a top player in the near future. Actually, you might not want to know her name, as DigitalMania CEO Walid Sultan Midani tells the BBC the company will allow the next winner to opt to receive butchered meat instead of a live cow. There’s also the option to donate Brigitte to charity – still whole, we hope.
Bagra is a free-to-play game, which is a friendly way of saying it’s free to an extent – like most mobile games these days, it offers opportunities to spend money on boosts. We don’t know whether the winning couple spent money to gain an advantage, and if they did, just how much was shelled out. Enough to buy a cow, perhaps? It’s possible: Mobile games routinely offer packs of gems, coins, and other perks for as much as $100 a pop, and they can be bought again and again if desired.
In any case, we doubt you’ll have a shot at providing a nice home for Brigitte if you’re located outside of North Africa: The game is only available there, and given livestock restrictions and transportation costs, it’s unlikely that she’ll travel long distances. But if you’re based in Tunisia and think you’ve got the skill to win your very own cow, now’s the time to prove it – for Brigitte’s sake.
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by Andrew Hayward, Modern Farmer
May 11, 2016
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