The Best Video Games Are Fashion
Three years ago, Highsnobiety released Select Your Character: a whitepaper on the rise of gaming in fashion brands’ marketing. At the time, an enormously rendered Travis Scott was plugging his new album Astronomical in Fortnite, and fashion aficionados were turning to their anthropomorphic characters on Animal Crossing as the place to get fits off during the pandemic. We had matured into an Era of Expression in gaming –– an era that began in the early ‘00s, when new gamers were playing games like The Sims or Club Penguin as a form of expression as opposed to button mashing. It’s been a revolt of sorts, driven by the idea that gaming isn’t just for the Kyle’s and their energy drink guzzling escapades. It was equally for the weird girls and the e-boys who liked their in-game aesthetics as much as their in-game adventures.
Fast-forward to 2024. The “era of expression” in gaming continues to complexify: In March, the PS2 Filter took Tik Tok by storm with Dua Lipa and Charli XCX album covers being rendered into PS2 game covers. Kendrick Lamar’s beef with Drake has been gamified into a Not Like Us 8-bit whack-a-mole by Richie Branson in July. Meanwhile, millions of kids on Roblox are posing on runway games Dress To Impress –– only to strike the same poses (i.e. Pose 28) at graduation and prom IRL.
Naturally, this kind of groundswell has attracted the types of fashion and lifestyle brands that strive to stay at culture’s cutting edge. But what’s most interesting about what’s going on in gaming isn’t just the scale of what brands are now doing but the diversity of mediums in which they’re being executed: Skins, creator-made mini games, soundtracks, and much more.
In Highsnobiety’s recent New Luxury’s, New Rules, we found that 71% of our audiences like it when brands make niche cultural references in their content. Who’s doing that really well? Balenciaga, NTS Radio, Coach, and MSCHF. We chatted with all four brands to find out more about how they decided to dive below the surface of sameness and harness the worldbuilding magnitude of gaming culture.
Balenciaga
When it comes to worldbuilding in luxury, Demna’s team at Balenciaga is of course known for breaking the mold with everything that they do. Gaming is no exception. In fact, it’s increasingly becoming the catalyst for Balenciaga’s interaction with their stans. “You provide an experiential opportunity for customers to play and interact with the brand in an alternative way, it feels precious, you create a moment, a new form of conversation, a different bond,” says Balenciaga.
Beginning with Afterworld:The Age Of Tomorrow for the Fall ‘21, Balenciaga transformed from a Maison to an independent games studio in order to present their collection. “We understood first-hand the scale and complexity of video game production. It took 8 months to develop the game from concept to release,” says Balenciaga. Afterworld:The Age Of Tomorrow is a 3D web-based game that takes players on an interactive journey based on “mythological pasts and projected futures” of Balenciaga. It explores the Fall 2021 collection modeled by 50 volumetric characters. Indie games like this have become a growing phenomenon among the mainstream, thanks to TikTok –– bridging the more hardcore game streamers on Twitch with the culture vultures on TikTok. Indie games typically embody a more expressive form of gameplay, with graphics and storylines that blend artisanal styles with unorthodox entertainment. That very juncture is where Balenciaga sits. So it feels only apt that some of their most memorable gaming outputs have centered on this. BFRND (yes, named after the artist) is another recent example. As a close collaborator of Balenciaga’s since 2017, the artist has scored original music for the Maison’s shows since 2017. Their most recent link up included an 8-Bit side runner, where BFRND runs through the different show sets they collaborated on. While the first three levels were free to play, a fourth level was only unlockable by scanning the NFC chip from the Balenciaga Music I BFRND merch, embedding the essence of gaming codes into the collection itself.
NTS Radio
Speaking of music, NTS Radio has planted its flag in another beloved corner of gaming culture –– soundtracks. Resident hosts from NTS Radio layered their own experiences over the top of songs and soundbites from the games that shaped so many musical tastes. “Many of our listeners are big gaming fans, and NTS founder Femi is also a bit of a gaming nerd, too, so to us having a series focussed on the incredible music in gaming was a no-brainer,” says Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura, Director of Music and Programming at NTS Radio. In true NTS Radio style, the programming covers a range of tastes and influences. “Like music, gaming is hugely diverse with a wide range of music featured, so there's plenty for us to get our teeth into,” says Thorlu-Bangura. There’s the Grand Theft Auto series for example that recalls some of the treasured radio stations of the franchise's past where icons like Karl Lagerfeld hosted K109 The Studio.
Established artists have also taken to NTS Radio to reflect on their niche tastes in video game soundtracks. JME grew up on Music 2000 on the PlayStation, a low key music production game where nascent grime beats were being created in bedrooms in the early 00’s by up and coming MC’s like Skepta and Dizzie Rascal. JME’s show reflected his love for this era of games via other midi jams from Street Fighter II, Castlevania and GoldenEye. Meanwhile, Mac Demarco flexed his knowledge by dedicating a mix to Japanese video game soundtracks from the likes of Nobuo Uematsu, composer of Final Fantasy. “NTS is a place where people can really show off their passions, no matter what they are. Artists know that they can come to NTS and really get as nerdy as they like,” says Thorlu-Bangura.
Coach
Looking to capitalize off its significant cultural momentum of late, Coach is the newest player in the gaming arena. Fresh off making Lyst Q2’s Hottest Brands for the first time ever (with the Tabby Bag landing as the 3rd hottest product), Coach is clearly fostering its relationship with Gen Z via Roblox and Zepeto. “Gaming offers a unique space for individuals, especially the Gen Z audience, to express themselves without the constraints of the real world.” says Kimberly Wallengren, Vice President of Marketing at Coach. Many fashion brands come crashing onto Roblox and Zepeto, building up their own fleeting games only to leave them like abandoned amusement parks once a campaign ends. Coach has taken a more culturally savvy approach. Since their “Find Your Courage” campaign was spearheaded by the likes of Lil Nas X and Camilla Mendes, they knew they needed to associate themselves with similarly credible names on Roblox and Zepeto.
As such, they teamed up with Nova to create their collection on Zepeto while also immersing themselves in established mini-games like Fashion Klosette and Fashion Famous 2 on Roblox. Fashion Famous 2 is particularly interesting to highlight given that other major Roblox fashion games like Dress To Impress have been criticized for their lack of avatar diversity, but Fashion Famous 2 players are able to implement “diverse body types, dynamic facial expressions, and adjustable clothing placement,” says Wallengren. The game is simple, your avatar is dropped into a shopping mall where you have four minutes to dress to a theme that you then strut down the runway. Coach not only integrated their SS24 collection (including the Tabby of course) in the game, but went so far as to create limited items for Roblox such as the Sparkle Wings and Sunset Blaze. With over a third of Roblox’s 80 million DAU’s saying they want to see rare, digital-only items that don’t yet exist in the physical world, Coach saw “20,000 items claimed in the first 12 hours” according to Wallengren. With courage at the core of Coach’s campaign, taking bets on niche creators, in-the-know games and digital-only limited items was only fitting.
MSCHF
There’s the courageous and then there’s the downright audacious when it comes to gaming, and MSCHF is an art collective that willingly steers to the latter. MSCHF has made a name for itself by taking “culturally recognisable ideas and flipping them,” says Lukas Bentel, Co-Chief Creative Officer of MSCHF. “A lot of the games that we make interface with the real world as much as possible.” Take Tax Heaven 3000, a lighthearted tax filing program that poses as an anime dating simulator. It provided a legitimate and entertaining way to file taxes while simultaneously commenting on the corruptive and predatory nature of the tax industry. “A lot of the projects we do have to slap in one line or in one sentence, but also slap even harder in depth,” says Bentel.
BTS In Battle certainly slapped hard on all fronts. It imagines a Game Boy-ified version of the world-famous Korean boy band BTS’s mandatory military service. All male Korean citizens are required to perform two years of military service, even if they’re global K-Pop stars. BTS In Battle speculatively (and absurdly) preempted this cultural flashpoint as an 8-bit video game, developed for the Game Boy Color. “We chose the Game Boy aesthetic because we aren’t a AAA Studio making crazy graphics. The Game Boy format is more accessible to produce, but it also has amazing form factors like the game cartridge, the game casing and of course the console itself,” said Kevin Wiesner, Co-Chief Creative Officer of MSCHF. This is what MSCHF are best at –– they create stories that are intertwined so closely with the medium they appear in one would be forgiven for thinking MSCHF have a medium-first approach. But this isn’t true. “The internal term we have is medium agnostic. You start with a concept and then you figure out the best vehicle for that idea. It could be a sneaker, it could be a cow, it could be a video game.” says Wiesner.
And more to come
As you can see by now, the Era of Expression is not about teenagers in their bedrooms screaming slurs into mics as they lose their kill streak on Call Of Duty. What we’re seeing from influential brands runs deeper, it champions the artistic and aesthetic niches that video games undeniably possess, while transforming the worlds these brands have built into actual playscapes.The future of brand worldbuilding will continue to thrive through video games.
This article is a partnership between Highsnobiety and Drawn Distant - a gaming and lifestyle publication by James Davis. Subscribe here for more.
