As virtual reality (VR) becomes more popular and recognised, a number of prestigious awards are beginning to include VR as part of its nominations, sometimes even creating entirely new categories to recognise the achievement of immersive media.
In 2017 a VR experience was created and released by creative studio Scatter in collaboration with Oculus Studios. Based on the larger Zero Days documentary, Zero Days VR told the story of the Stuxnet malware. Now it has been revealed that the title has won an Emmy Award.
Zero Days VR looks at the world of cyber security through the lens of Stuxnet, a type of malware generally recognised as the first cyber weapon to do damage in the real world.
Viewers can experience how the Stuxnet virus was originally created as part of a secret mission developed by the governments of the USA and Israel in order to sabotage an Iranian nuclear facility. The audience can see the invisible worlds inside a computer in a new way in order to get a better understanding of how these ‘cyber weapons’ work.
The VR documentary has now won the Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary at the 39th News & Documentary Emmy Awards, beating out other nominees such as Finding Home from Time and We Are Witnesses from The Marshall Project.
The co-founder of Scatter, Yasmin Elayat announced the win on Twitter. The Twitter post also included the full acceptance speech for the award, along with a following tweet acknowledging the work of the various people who had contributed towards the project.
Zero Days VR is available on the Oculus Store for the Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift and Oculus Go and a version is also available on the HTC Vive, priced at $4.99 (USD).
For future coverage of award-winning VR titles, keep checking back with VRFocus.