“Sorry, Joined Late!” is a common phrase said by Dress To Impress players who have scored many places on the podium. Dress To Impress, or DTI, is an online game on the Roblox platform. The game was created by Gigi (@Gigi_DTI) in October of 2023. To date, it has amassed 2.8 billion visits, a 91% rating, and around 180k active players at any given time. It is also currently the 4th most popular game on the platform.
Dress To Impress consists of 5-minute sections where you have access to a map full of different clothing, accessories, makeup, hair, and nail options. You are given a theme to dress your character into. Afterwards, everybody’s characters are shown one at a time walking down a runway. You then vote out of five stars for every outfit. Then a podium of the top three is shown along with a full leaderboard with more in-depth statistics of how many stars every player received. You then have a brief intermission to remove everything, complete an obstacle course for extra in-game currency, take screenshots, or chat with other players.
Screenshots from the theme “Boss”
Roblox as a platform has developed a reputation as a kid’s game, looking at player age statistics 42% of players are under the age of 12. 16% of users are 13-16 with 23% being 17-24. DTI is marked safe for all ages. This has led to online discourse between older and younger players. Notably, players asking for 16+ servers.
This sentiment is unfortunately quite common among players, they typically cite younger players not dressing “on theme”. Some of the hardest themes for younger players tend to be Gyaru, Acubi, Tudor, Lolita Fashion, and Eldritch Horror. Three of these are east asian fashion subcultures, one is a historical period, and another is based on iconic horror novels. These are admittedly not things you would expect children under 12 to be well versed in.
The problem arises in themes like this, do the creators simplify the themes for younger players? That creates the issue of the game not being challenging or engaging for older more experienced players. The younger players could just look it up but many refuse to do so and instead just make what they think is cute. In some cases, there is even a literary comprehension aspect. With Tudor often being misinterpreted as tutor by young players. This leads to users fighting in the chat, oftentimes resulting in at least one player receiving a temporary or even a permanent ban.
These types of negative interactions have led to a reputation for fighting in chat. People often joke about going on Dress To Impress to fight with kids. This type of behaviour has been normalized amongst older players to the point that it often recives positive feedback online.
This has led to a real life impact, both positive and negative. On the positive side many players have been given the chance to explore their personal style and expand how they think about fashion in general. Since social media became widespread trends have moved much faster, now with online games they don’t need to buy fast fashion items to have fun with new trends. On the other side of the coin however, with such a wide spread game promoting fighting behaviour people are slowly learning to be more critical of real life outfits.
Overall, Dress To Impress is at its core a positive game. The player base that has formed can be quite toxic, these players are detrimental to the overall enjoyment of other, especially younger, players. When playing keep in mind that you don’t need to interact and can simply keep playing or switch servers.
