Why games are leading the road to digital fashion

As you've learned, there are different forms of digital fashion. The custom avatars category accounts for most of the digital fashion's yearly revenue, for some very specific reasons.

The combination of immersion and time spent on the platforms determines the likelihood of a user engaging in digital fashion activities.

You see, gaming platforms are the only ones that can immerse users and encourage to spend more time on the platform. Take the example of the famous Subway Surfer game. If you stop navigating (moving) your avatar in real time, it will crash and die. You need to be attentive all the time to stay alive. This defines immersion—you're hooked to the screen. Also, the gameplay never stops; there's no end to it. The more you play, the more coins you gain (incentivization). This factor encourages users to spend more time on the game.

On the contrary, on social media platforms, you may spend a lot of time, but they aren't immersive. It's not like if you stop scrolling, your account will get deleted. And the AR filters—they're definitely immersive and keep you hooked in real time, but you don't spend over 10 minutes browsing filters. What makes games perfect for the roadway to digital fashion is their ability to converge immersion and time spent into one environment.

Why is immersion and time spent important for digital fashion?

The answer is Identity association. This concept takes us back to the psychology of users. You become attached to things that you spend time with. Why do we care so much about what goes on our Instagram profile? Because hundreds or thousands of people who you know are looking at it, and you've spent a significant amount of time on the platform building your reputation. What you post there reflects your identity to everybody you know.

Now, consider this from a gaming platform's perspective. The amount of time spent and the level of immersion is already 10x compared to social media platforms. At the same time, you're not only connected with your friends on these platforms but also with many international strangers. You're literally representing yourself on a global level. During such scenarios on gaming platforms, your identity does not get associated with the game, but the gaming avatar itself becomes your real identity. This leads us to a phase where the digital persona of a person become more important than their real-world persona. This level of immersion and identity association into virtual world encourages gamers to spend billions of dollars every year on digital fashion to represent their true selves.

The current state of digital fashion on Roblox

The true potential of digital fashion lies in platforms that allow not only the creators of the game to build avatar accessories, but also the consumers. These are platforms where not only reputable brands but also ordinary people build and sell their fashion assets. This concept mirrors the concept of open marketplace of the real-world, where anybody can participate.

This brings us to Roblox, a platform that is leading the digital fashion industry in terms of users, and commerce. Let’s dive deeper into the digital fashion trends of Roblox.

Consumers insights

Gen Z and Alpha are the core consumers of digital fashion assets on Roblox, here’s what they think about it:

• Over 56% of Gen Z says styling their avatar is more important them then styling themselves in real life

• 86% of Gen Z agree that their real life dressing sense is inspired by their gaming avatars.

• 3 in 4 Gen Z says wearing a digital fashion accessory from a recognized brands is important to them.

• 52% of Gen Z says they’re comfortable to spend up to $10 per month on digital fashion.

• 88% of Gen Z says that expressing themselves in the immersive worlds with avatar accessories has helped them to express in the real world too.

• Most important avatars accessories that Gen Z customizes daily/weekly.

  • Clothing 70%

  • Hair 67%

  • Accessories 57%

  • Skin tone 47%

  • Body shape 46%

Source - Roblox yearly trends report 2023

Synchronization of digital and real world fashion

Real world to digital fashion

If we observe the trends of Digital Fashion on Roblox marketplace, they mirror the real world trends. Below are two great examples.

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift's world tour has taken the world by storm, and Roblox is no exception. Most of the iconic dresses that Taylor wore during the performance are going viral on the Roblox marketplace.

What makes these accessories really special is the fact that they're limited. This means their quantity was limited in number (just like real-world accessories), the lesser the number of assets available the more likely are people to buy it, because everybody wants that unique Taylor Swift dress! Some of these assets went from 0 Robux to 7000 Robux in value!

This rapid price inflection tells us a very important detail that digital fashion follows the same paradigm as real world fashion.

Scarcity creates demand.

(Taylor Swift Merch on Roblox)

This piece of merchandise is just one example; there are thousands of Taylor Swift's items available on the Roblox Marketplace in the form of Free, Paid, and Limiteds. All Limiteds are sold out, Paid ones have been purchased thousands of times, and the free items are extremely popular.

It's important to note that all of these assets are fan-made. Taylor Swift hasn't officially launched anything on Roblox. If these unofficial assets are performing so well, just imagine the situation if Taylor or a partner brand were to officially launch merchandise on Roblox.

Y2K Fashion

The Y2K fashion trend took the real world by storm in the early 2000s, and somehow, the trend has made its way into the 2020s. But this time, Y2K is making noise in both the real and reel world! As we saw a spike in sales of Y2K accessories in the real world, the Roblox marketplace noticed a similar pattern.

(Y2K fashion accessories)

Just like Taylor Swift's limited edition items, the Y2K limited accessories are also all sold out, and performing well in both the free and paid tiers.

What these two trends show us is that there is a deep level of synchronization between the fashion trends of the real and virtual world. Whatever goes viral in the real world definitely creates ripples in the virtual world.

Interestingly, this synchronization sometimes gets reversed. As we learned earlier, 86% of Gen Z agree that their real-life dressing sense is inspired by their gaming avatars. As a result, we can expect a shift in the way innovation happens in the fashion industry, moving towards a digital-first world.

Digital to real world fashion

Trends on Roblox are not solely influenced by the outside world. They also originate within the Roblox ecosystem, and analyzing them can provide significant insight into the psychology of the new generation, such as what intrigues them and what motivates them to make a purchase.

There are millions of avatar accessories on Roblox, and the easiest way to analyze the trending ones is by visiting the Roblox Marketplace and sorting the search by two main filters: (Best Selling + Paid + Past Week) and (Most Favorited + Paid + Past Week). The best selling and most favorited items reveal what intrigues their interest, while the past week filter sheds light on the latest obsessions. Even though free assets make up a large number in sales for obvious reasons, but it's the paid items that truly reveal what users are willing to invest in. You can apply these filters to all the categories like Clothing, Accessories, Head, and Animation.

Here’s a list of current trends on Roblox Marketplace

Clothing → In the clothing section, the pet themed clothes and knitted arm warmers are trending.

Accessories → In the extra accessories section, Hello kitty themed backpacks, Happy and Cute faces are trending.

Impact of digital assets in real world purchases

Below is the screenshot of Google searches made for Hello Kitty Backpack in the USA region in the past one year. There’s a spike in searches made in the last two weeks.

The data given below may be partial, but it provides significant insight into children's psychology. The trends they interact with in virtual worlds likely influence their online searches and potential purchases. The impact of digital assets on the purchase of real-world products is only going to increase as the younger generation grows.\

(Spike in searches made for Hello Kitty Backpack)

Top digital fashion experiences on Roblox

The trend of digital fashion not limited till avatar accessories. There are experiences with billions and millions of visitors, doing exceptionally well on Roblox. These experiences emphasizes on commercialization of digital assets and promoting users to show their creativity by trying out different accessories.

(Avatar shop experiences ranked by total number of visits)

1. Catalog Avatar creator → The most famous experience in the digital fashion category. It allows players to try out many different avatar accessories for free, including the paid and limited assets.

• Avg daily visits → 3.2M

• Avg daily CCUs → 30K

• Lifetime visits → 1.95B

• Avg time spent per session → 12.6 mins

2. Dress to impress → This experience might be the next big thing on Roblox and will showcase the true potential of avatar accessories in experiences. Dress to Impress allows users to decorate their avatars for a given theme and then participate in a ramp walk, where their avatars get rated by other players. Giving players the ability to try premium assets for free made “Dress to Impress” the fastest growing experience of all time.

• Avg daily visits → 4M

• Avg daily CCUs → 50K

• Lifetime visits → 192M

• Avg time spent per session → 13.8 mins

The number behind these experiences speak a very peculiar story. On the big picture it wasn’t the game mechanics that brought users to these experiences, it was the freebies, the ability to try assets on your avatars for free.

Consider these top comments on these two avatar catalog experiences, user’s are more intrigued by the idea of free assets rather than the gameplay.

Opportunity for brands

One of the greatest opportunities that digital fashion offers is the ability for anyone to participate in this revolution. In the physical world, the scope of fashion designing is bound by available fabrics and physical laws. However, these limitations do not exist in the virtual world. Digital fashion brands can invent any garment or fabric type, leading to unique and exotic designs previously unseen.

Roblox boasts more than 214 million monthly active users, each eager to make their avatar unique. This presents an opportunity for brands to harness the flexible ecosystem of Roblox by launching their User-Generated Content (UGC) asset collections and build recognition among the next generation of consumers.

Why start with UGC accessories

The potential of Roblox for digital fashion is well-known to brands. Fashion brands like Gucci, Ralph Lauren, and Vans, as well as non-fashion brands like Walmart, Spotify, and OnePlus, have launched their native experiences and digital fashion assets on the platform.

From a professional standpoint, I personally recommend brands start by launching digital fashion accessories on Metaverse platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. The cost of building native experiences starts from $200K-$300K and usually takes a couple of months to complete the project, while deploying a few sets of UGC accessories with influencer partnerships would only cost a few thousand dollars.

Deploying UGC accessories first would also help brands understand whether Roblox or Fortnite are ideal marketing platforms for them or not, and whether the audience can relate to their product. If the UGC accessories perform well, the brands can always move forward with building native experiences.

How to launch your brand on Roblox

The Roblox developer ecosystem is the largest 3D user-generated content ecosystem worldwide. With over 9.5 million Roblox developers and 40 million experiences, it can be quite challenging for new brands to find success on this diverse platform. Selecting the appropriate developers, games, and influencers can be a daunting task.

This is where Metakey come into the play. We help brands build native experiences, identify the perfect game partners, establish communities, and plan custom UGC launches on Roblox. For example, we recently assisted the New Zealand national rugby team in launching a native experience on Roblox. Additionally, we launched our native experience, "Thor's Forge," on the platform. We are truly committed to our mission of helping brands engage with the younger generation.

Let’s get your brand started on Roblox! Reach us here