We have used game creation as a metaphor in creating an experimental setup to study evacuation behavior in a VR environment. Creating a live emergency with real people would be dangerous and unethical. However, creating a virtual emergency with real people is safe and efficient. Virtual reality experiments with virtual evacuation drills are necessary to study human behavior under emergency situations that cannot be evaluated in the real world. The use of collaborative virtual environments to run virtual evacuation drills for an emergency evacuation eliminates risk of injury to participants and allows for the testing of scenarios that could not be tested in real life due to legal issues and possible health risks to participants. We have developed a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) using Unity 3D gaming engine for performing evacuation drills.