Subotron arcademy: Virtual Fashion

Understanding Dress-Up in the Participatory Culture of Gaming

Dr. Nicolle Lamerichs
HU University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht NL

Research on the role of the fashion in game culture is scarce, but much needed. Fashion inspires the participatory culture around gaming. Many fans engage in cosplay, for example, by dressing up as iconic fictional characters. Fans often make such costumes themselves, inspired by animation, television and games. This hand-made fashion blurs the line between players, costumers, and fashion designers. Cosplay shows us that embodiment, play and fan identity are strongly connected.
Fashioning is also integral to games on multiple levels. In many popular games, from ?The Sims? to the ?Dragon Age? series, players can customize their appearance. Dress up creates a personal relationship between the player and her in-game character. Fashion games are a well-known genre in casual ?girl games?, such as ?50s Dress Up Game? or ?The Perfect Dress?. Problematically, these games often have a gendered and normative rhetoric of what players should wear. By judging players on what they wear, game mechanics can actively discourage creative styles of fashioning and queer performances.
Lamerichs argues that we need to look more closely at the persuasive rhetoric of dress-up as a traditional and digital form of play. Game designers can draw lessons from cosplay as a style of play. How can games experiment with appearance and embodiment in new ways?