New VR Campaign Traps Viewers Inside a War Zone Home

Earlier this year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) broke hearts and picked up the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes with Hope, a simple but devastating spot highlighting how healthcare has become a target in war zones.

For its latest campaign, the charity is seeking to remind people of the other casualties of urban warfare - innocent civilians - and has ventured into the world of virtual reality with an interactive experience that brings the audience into the home of a family under siege. 

Usually, when we think of conflict, we think of refugees and scenes of devastation, but rarely do we think of the people who are trapped in their houses, unable to escape the horrors and atrocities occurring around them.

Created by Don’t Panic, The Right Choice is a virtual reality experience, available through a downloadable app, that takes the viewer into the home of a typical family. At first, the scene appears peaceful and with a semblance of normality - mum's helping the kids with their homework, dad's sweeping the floor - but then bullets suddenly shatter the window and they are confronted with a life-threatening situation. At that point, the viewer has to decide what the family should do: run or hide?

You can get an idea of the experience below:

Using VR with gaze-based interactivity, the app is able to immerse the viewer and put them in the driving seat; making them complicit in the decision-making, yet unable to help once the choice has been made. The sobering takeaway is that whatever decision you make, there's simply no escape from the horror of war. 

“We needed to generate understanding and empathy around the fact that for the millions of people worldwide, who are trapped by urban warfare, there is often no escape and no right choice," explains George McCallum, senior creative at Don’t Panic. "How to do this? Give the audience a choice... and let them see for themselves how hopeless it can be.”

“War is back in cities and increasingly it’s civilians who pay the price. The ICRC’s research in 2017 showed that urban conflict accounted for a shocking 70% of all civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria," adds Jennifer Hauseman, director of communications and information management at the ICRC. "Armed groups hide under the cover of the city – not the bush. Guerilla warfare takes place in the streets. New technology, including virtual reality, can be a powerful tool to help a large audience understand the human cost of war."

To experience The Right Choice in full, you can download it via the Google Play Store and the App store.