The 2020 Emmy Awards were held yesterday and one VR experience managed to win big.
As reported last month, there were four VR experiences nominated across two categories this year — Outstanding Original Interactive Program and Outstanding Derivative Interactive Program. The former category’s nominees were all VR experiences — When We Stayed Home, The Messy Truth VR and Rebuilding Notre Dame — while the latter featured only one VR experience — Doctor Who: The Runaway.
The Messy Truth VR took home the award for Outstanding Original Interactive Program, while Big Mouth Guide To Life took home the award for Outstanding Derivative Interactive Program, meaning The Runaway missed out. These two awards were part of yesterday’s main ceremony, a separate juried award was also given to The Line earlier in the month, which won in the Innovation In Interactive Programming category.
The Messy Truth is an experience focused on race that stars Winston Duke, known for his role as M’Baku in 2018’s Black Panther. It was directed by Elijah Allan-Blitz and uses hand tracking combined with 360 video to put you in the body of the main character, a 12-year old African American boy. Duke plays the boy’s father, and the story follows the two of them as they’re pulled over by the police.
It’s based on a real-life story and is split across two episodes. While we haven’t tried the experience ourselves, it looks like both episodes are available to download for free on The Messy Truth site. Given the APK format, it’s probably compatible with the Oculus Quest via sideloading — if you don’t know how to do that, you can read a how-to here.
