Tokyo, Japan – Creative agency TBWA\Hakuhodo has launched an internal game called ‘The Escape’ which takes the agency’s team building into the metaverse, where it combines the idea of an evacuation challenge game and disaster preparedness drills all within the virtual space.
The game begins with an earthquake at the office, and multiple players work together to evacuate the office while rescuing injured colleagues and handling a fire accident. Players can be immersed in a realistic 3D office space wearing VR headsets, crouching down to secure their own safety and performing firefighting activities to accomplish the required missions one after another.
“The Escape” was launched this month to coincide with the start of the 2023 fiscal year in Japan. Since the program can be conducted with a maximum of 8 people, it is expected that participating in the same content and communicating with each other will contribute to team building and raise awareness of disaster prevention in the office.
Kaname Aratame, creative director for Disruption Lab at TBWA\Hakuhodo, said that they focused on providing a realistic sense of crisis, which is impossible in conventional evacuation drills, such as the inconvenience caused by poor visibility and office furniture becoming obstacles in the event of a disaster.
“Building the office, destroying it, and then escaping from it – it is the experience that you can get only on Metaverse. It is not an exciting experience but by reproducing a full-scale realistic office with accurately putting disaster prevention goods as its physical location, players can naturally acquire disaster prevention training, which is often passed off as someone else’s problem,” Aratame said.
