Video: Slim Jim Launches Spicy Town

Slim Jim has launched its own virtual world, Spicy Town, which actually now is the main, official website for the snack food. It's a pretty basic, Flash-based environment: users can walk around, chat, pick fights, collect Slim Jims, and wreak havoc on the environment. It's actually more a casual game with avatars than a virtual world--there's no real persistence in the environment--but it's still interesting.

Most interesting to me is how easy it is to create a custom avatar that I immediately attached to. One of the only steps to the registration process, which is minimal and full of 'tude, is to upload a photo of yourself, which is then mapped on to the edgier version of you. I only added a drawing someone had done of me, but it was still entertaining to watch the spicy version of myself walk around.

Low barriers to entry, a touch of realism, and activities? Sounds like a decent way to engage with adults (or at least young adults) in virtual worlds.

Spicyside.com from Spicy on Vimeo.

Comments

[Tonus]

Extremely similar to the Red interactive site www.ff0000.com, fights are fun though. Their Parallax is a little weird, and they could use some photoshop training. Still fun though