Alongside the Season 5 premiere of Silicon Valley, HBO is releasing a VR experience called Inside the Hacker Hostel that lets users explore—and trash—the show’s infamous home and workspace.
HBO’s comedy series Silicon Valley follows the antics of five tech entrepreneurs as they attempt to build a decentralized internet. Much of the action takes place in the “Hacker Hostel,” where the main characters work and play.
Silicon Valley: Inside the Hacker Hostel takes users into a 3D recreation of the house, which has been filled with 750 interactive items. Video challenges from the show’s characters Dinesh and Gilfoyle send users on missions ranging from destroying old hard drives to solving a code crisis.
Users can follow a series of tasks or have free reign to do whatever they like in the virtual environment, such as playing Foosball, making toast or hitting a virtual bong.
The interactive VR experience launches March 25 for HTC Vive and was developed by Rewind, a studio that has created branded VR experiences for Red Bull, Jaguar, Lexus, Paramount and others. According to Fast Company, Rewind recreated the Hacker Hostel using 360-degree imagery of the show’s actual set, as well as set blueprints.
HBO has integrated VR into its marketing strategy before, beginning with Westworld. Presented at Disrupt 2016, the app combines interactive VR—allowing users to handle objects in the virtual world—and passive, 360-degree video.
“We recognized the role that technology was going to play for our service and how we tell stories,” Ryan Wilkerson, vice president of experience design at HBO told Digital Trends. “As a result, we made the decision to make a substantial human capital investment by assembling a best-in-class technology team.”
The network launched HBO Go VR in 2016 for Google Daydream devices, allowing users to view its programming in a virtual environment. The app will reportedly be available for the new Oculus Go headset, as well.
