Hunger in LA

​A virtual news game that creates the feeling of 'being there' as a food crisis unfolds in Los Angeles.

What is it?

It is an immersive experience built in virtual reality using game building techniques. The project recreates a factual eyewitness account of a crisis in a food bank line at the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles, where a man falls into a diabetic coma while waiting for food.

Creator De la Peña wearing the goggles to play the virtual reality game

The virtual simulation is based on 7 minutes of unedited real time audio, recorded by a journalism student during the actual incident. The piece requires wearing special 3D virtual reality goggles and makes the user feel as if he or she is on scene as the crisis unfolds. Provided with a first person perspective through the goggles, the userexperiencesthe news rather than seeing or reading it.

How does it work?

In this virtual reality news game, the user can be present and walk around in the news story and interact with other characters in a fully immersive, simulated world.

To construct her story, De la Peña used game-development tools, Unity 3-D, a body-tracking system, and a head-mounted goggle display, along with live recorded audio.

Hunger in LA puts the user literally in the middle of the story, waiting in line for food with other (virtual) clients of the food bank in downtown Los Angeles.

Why did they make it?

De la Peña is a former Newsweek correspondent and documentary filmmaker. Her purpose for Hunger in LA is to call attention to the growing issue of hunger in the United States.

De la Peña combines facts and figures with fact-based virtual recreations, which allow for a more intense and interactive encounter with the news.

She says: “I finished the piece with what I consider to be the first immersive 3D infographic, in which we show the real statistics of one in five Americans being hungry. And the situation is even worse for children.”

Why did we select it?

Hunger in LA stands out as a powerful, innovative, and fully immersive news experience, based on real audio recorded at a food bank in Los Angeles.

Rather than using cold facts and figures, De la Peña takes a small scale human drama and turns it into an emotional confrontation with the everyday reality of hunger in one of the richest countries in the world.

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