(Newswire.net — October 31, 2015) — New virtual reality app puts you in the shoes of an employer at The World Trade Center in New York City, a moment before the first airplane crashes into it. Experiencing anxiety, fear, suicide of colleagues and the overall sense of helplessness, your job is to try to escape before the building collapses.
According to its makers, the app was not made to be “obscene or sensationalist,” it was a three-month school project by a six members team. The authors hired professional actors to contribute to the reality.
The app is named ’08:46’ after the exact time that American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. The game starts a minute before the event, at an office on the 101st floor.
Though the game creators insisted they didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, they have been accused by the community of being tasteless or exploitative of the tragic event.
“In the team, we are all in our twenties,” Anthony Krafft, a student at the French school ENJMIN, told Tech Insider. “And 9/11, on a global scale, changed as much our social interactions as our geopolitical context.”
The creators claim that the game is not commercial and that they only wanted to “remind that 9/11 was, for the victims, first and foremost a workday like every other workday.”
“It was essential to us to be as accurate as we could, never be obscene or sensationalist out of respect for the victims,” Krafft said.
Social experiment or not, it drew attention and criticism worldwide. People are wandering why someone would want to feel the horror WTC workers felt upon the attack.
“Why would anyone want to create a real life horrific event? Keep it in fiction please,” YouTube user FrankyManky said.
“Am I wrong or is it more than very unhealthy to seek to make money creating and representing this horror scene?!!” another tweeted.
According to other comments, there is nothing unusual and controversial about this project. “It’s simply a re-creation of the events.”
In the end, it all comes down to children and their perspective as they are the biggest VR game technology users. According to one father, kids should be shown this in context to other disasters throughout history as an excellent learning tool that would teach survival techniques and prevent them from panicing and making wrong moves.