In terms of the ongoing arms race for dumb fast food gimmicks, KFC is usually several paces ahead of the competition, whether that means making buckets with photo printers built into them, carving a meteorite into the shape of a sandwich, or just slapping tomato sauce and cheese on a piece of chicken and calling it a pizza.
Now, the company is applying that same “fuck it, it’ll briefly distract people” approach to its employee training program, announcing today that it’s created a VR game to teach the world’s cash-poor, time-rich teens how to cook chicken. But “The Hard Way” isn’t just a dry fast food kitchen simulator; it’s also an attempt at edutainment, apparently designed by someone who played too much Portal and thought, “Yeah, we can do that with chicken.”
The full video of the experience is already online, in case you want to learn about breading, rinsing, and some mercenary VR designer’s idea of what “funny Colonel Sanders dialogue” sounds like. Per PC Gamer, KFC has promised that the program—which is apparently designed to be used with the Oculus Rift system—isn’t just a gimmick, and that it’ll actually be rolled out to teach the company’s system to real employees.