Ice cream and pizza, parties and alcohol, summer and ray ban sun glasses, Batman and Robin. There are many things in life that just look natural together. Some pairings however, need to be forced. The union between the gaming and the fashion world is one of such.
In the early days, it looked like the union would peter out after a while due to the air of artificiality around it all. However, on recent evidence, the gaming-fashion relationship is here to stay.
Early Days
Today, you can find clothing designs featuring everything from characters in popular titles to characters in games from UK casinos like newcasinosonline.co. It wasn’t always so though. It took a major title like Call of Duty: Ghost to influence the fashion world to adopt gaming designs. They did this through the Skull Scarf which was incorporated in the game to increase design accuracy. The inclusion of the Skull Scarf in the game influenced more people to wear them.
Gaming World and Fashion Today
Today, fashion designers are doing more than producing just a scarf. Square Enix and Sony launched clothing lines covering a number of games including Watch Dogs, Unchartered, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, Eve Online, Diablo, Halo, Assassin’s Creed and many others. Musterbrand has gone into partnership with them to produce fashionable hoodies, sweatshirts, coats, jackets, pants, hats, scarfs, bags etc. that many fashion buffs would be comfortable with. Their Halo collection was widely heralded at launch.
Away from that combination, the Betheseda Store has clothing apparel based on games like DOOM, Fallout, The Evil Within, The Elder Scrolls, Dishonored, Wolfenstein, Quake and many more.
What is behind the increase in uptake?
The reality of gaming today is that it has come a long way from the days when gamers had to hide their passion.
From movies, comics, music and even book adaptations, gamers have lots of encouragement to identify with their gaming passion. The integration with the fashion world drives this even further. Gamers now have the opportunity to wear more than just generic gaming t-shirts. They can now fully identify with their favourite characters whilst remaining stylish. Even though there are many ways to wear even generic white shirts, the unique nature of gaming apparels is a huge draw for the fashion savvy gamer.
Concerns
Analysts in the fashion world are concerned that the gaming fashion franchises may be restricted in their target audience. There is the concern that the apparels will only ever appeal to people that already know and play the games they are based on. This is true. Bold fashion designs based on games like Diablo, Little Big Planet or Bioshock will leave the uninitiated scratching their heads. The onus therefore lies on the game fashion designers to find a middle ground with their designs (like the one pictured) in order to attract more non-gamers.
