It’s not often when you hear the words “Roblox” and “adults” in the same sentence. However, around August 2024, that’s exactly what Dress to Impress achieved. Dress to Impress is a fashion game on the popular platform, Roblox, where you dress your avatar with a five minute timer, then all players in the server walk onto the runway one by one to be voted on a 5 star scale. The more stars you gain, the higher in rank you climb, and the more opportunities you get with items.Â
The game’s graphics and constant updates, as well as the relationship between players and the development team, drove Dress to Impress to the top of the charts in terms of visits in Roblox. The game has accrued 2.7 billion visits in just its first couple months, which in comparison to one of Roblox’s most popular games, “Adopt Me,” is an incredible feat since the latter game didn’t reach even 1 billion visits until two years after launch. The game was not only popular with children, but also with adults, a phenomena that Roblox has rarely witnessed beyond adult Roblox streamers. The developers of Roblox itself credit the game’s popularity to its accessibility, being a free game that loads on almost any console. But, DTI (as it’s more commonly referred to) players will tell you that it’s popularity is due to much more than that. DTI’s popularity grew thanks to the constant streams, Tik-Tokkers, and Youtube videos that adults were producing. The game’s variety of toggles, colors, hairstyles, make-up, etc. also make it so that the player can be someone completely different than themself. The multitude of themes is a great incentive as well.Â
Though the game has its flaws, specifically with some of the developers, there is no game I have researched thus far that has met such a wide age-range of players, with 17-24 year olds almost beating the range of 7-13 year olds. I, personally, as someone who plays sometimes when I am bored, also think that the normalization of playing the game, and looking beyond the “kids” label on Roblox’s brand, contributed to the massive growth of the game. Hell, the game was so popular that it even secured a collaboration with Charli XCX for her album “brat,” creating gameplay centered on the “brat summer” trend that we witnessed during July and August. Even now, as school has started up and people are returning to mundaneness, the game maintains a solid 300,000 active players at all times, constantly pumping out updates, incentives, and promotions. I highly recommend trying out the game if you haven’t, and also taking note of the massive stride of innovation and inclusiveness the game has achieved so far.