If you haven’t noticed, the theme for this week’s paper is voting. Unfortunately, my political career started and ended with passing AP Gov, so I’d like to take this time to complain about the voting system in my favorite game: Dress To Impress (DTI).
Although DTI, a Roblox fashion game, might seem like it’s made for children, it’s recently been taking over our generation. Players construct an outfit based on a theme and vote for who is placed on the podium with a five star system. The game was created by a 17- and 14-year-old and started small, but now has been played over 2 billion times and collaborated with Charli XCX for an exclusive “brat” themed update. There’s even an extensive amount of in-game lore that people follow. I’ve grown closer to some of my Stevens friends by playing together and even see some classmates playing during class.
I may not have paid the 10 dollars for the VIP version (which unlocks more outfits) but I’ve always loved fashion games. It started with a fashion game inside Fantage, a virtual world I was obsessed with when I was younger. After that I graduated to play Fashion Famous, DTI’s predecessor with similar mechanics but less customization options. I take the game embarrassingly seriously. There’s something addicting about piecing together things to make the outfit look aesthetically pleasing.
With each round played, there’s always a guarantee you’ll see a horrible fit. And by horrible, I mean a dead lantern fly outside of Howe looks better. Some players don’t even attempt to change their clothes and keep the default gray avatar. I choose to leave those outfits at the default 1-star rating, and lo and behold – they get first.
Meanwhile, my outfit —the one I researched inspiration for on Pinterest and sent a screenshot to my friends for approval— got a grand total of seven stars, placing me last on the leaderboard. Is it because my outfit truly was the worst? Maybe. But I choose to believe in a flaw in the game itself.
Players vote for each other, but can’t vote for themselves. If I were to vote honestly for each player, that would guarantee me last place. Many people choose to just not vote at all to avoid risking their placement. When people share their outfits on TikTok, the comments are always filled with people saying, “so cute! i’ll be generous: 2 stars.”
Funnily enough, there aren’t benefits to placing on the podium. The game counts the amount of stars you get which lets you level up and unlock exclusive clothes. The highest rank, Top Model, requires you to have 25,000 stars. If you get 25 stars a round, that’s 1000 games!
Placing last place shouldn’t matter. Honestly, there’s a certain amount of validation I feel seeing myself up there. Even if it’s because I force my friends to give me five stars, it’s nice to feel praised for those brief seconds. If players worked together and gave each other five stars, there would definitely be more people with the Top Model rank. But for now, I’ll enjoy sparingly handing out my two stars.
