IT’S New Employee Training Game Is a Virtual Reality Nightmare
There are a lot of nightmarish things about KFC in the past but we haven’t seen anything like this before. Now KFC is owning crispier parts of its brand with a new VR horror game that’s become a “bizarre initiation rite” for new employees, according to Eater.
KFC say’s it’ll use the Oculus Rift game to “supplement its robust, multi-step employee training program”. The Oculus game places players in an escape room where the booming, hack-coughing voice of Colonel Sanders instructs employees on how to make KFC fried chicken with good ol’ disembodied VR hands. If they fail, they’re locked in the room, forever, with Colonel Sanders.Which simplifies to “if you dont pass you can’t escape”.
KFC's unsettling new employee training game is a virtual reality nightmare https://t.co/p503Zx7ZdD pic.twitter.com/fhm1TuwqB8
— Eater (@Eater) August 23, 2017
The game is started when a high pitched voice of Colonel yells “Release the birds!” as a bag of chicken parts descends from the ceiling. The player must inspect every piece before washing and rinsing and breading and shaking them. A robot servant comes to help, but the Colonel assures the employee that they will never, not ever, be replaced by robots.
Eater, who originally reported on this very strange thing, explains that KFC notified them about the VR experience via a press release:
The press release notes that this VR exercise takes workers through the chicken cooking process in just 10 minutes, as opposed to the 25 minutes it takes IRL, so perhaps the idea here is to speed up the training process (and to avoid potentially wasting product). Or hey, maybe somebody at KFC HQ just got a really good deal on a whole pallet of Oculus Rifts.
A video of a full play-through is available on Eater’s website.
