My thesis applies interdisciplinary approaches to an examination of fashion and video games. Video games and fashion are often considered separately as gendered entities, with the former occupying the realm of masculinity and the latter occupying the realm of femininity. This ideology has made video games an undervalued and underexamined area of research within fashion studies scholarship. Using fashion studies and media studies frameworks, I expand on the conversation about video games and the ways in which they serve as spaces for agency and subversion through character augmentation and technology sharing.

My project relies on surveys, interviews, case studies, and personal gameplay experiences to analyze the nature of gamers’ interactions with fashion in virtual spaces. Previous research has focused mainly on Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) and sandbox-style life simulators; my paper instead explores the importance of character creation to the gaming experience and gamer’s predominant aesthetic habits. It surveys the ways gamers navigate personal style, agency, and restraint in various contexts including gameplay genre, development restrictions, modifications, multiplayer functionality, and streamed and recorded content. The games analyzed include the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix, 2010–25), the role-playing game Baldur's Gate III (Larian Games, 2023), the action-adventure Monster Hunter Series (Capcom, 2004–25) alongside Lies of P (NEOWIZ, 2023), Hogwarts Legacy (Portkey Games, 2023) Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games, 2018), Skyrim (Bethesda Games Studio, 2011), and Harvest Moon: Animal Parade (Natsume, Inc., 2008).

By examining fashion's effects on aspects such as narrative, streaming, recording, and multiplayer functions, my research reveals that fashion and games are not separate and gendered but intrinsically linked through everyday fashion practices. My paper posits that virtual self-styling facilitates extraordinary agency and creativity, and players' sartorial choices reflect and reinforce fashion's social significance by freeing them to explore their identities in an ideal reality.

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