Now Everyone’s Wearing itJanuary 20th, 2008 by Katt
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Remember the good old days when you wanted to wear a t-shirt with Samus on it, you’d have to print out the image backwards on transfer paper from your printer and then ask your mom to iron it on a plain shirt? Unless you were one of the lucky kids who got video game apparel from Japan, seeing a gaming shirt was a rarity. One kid would come to school with a Nintendo shirt and was considered a god not only between gamers but to the rest of the school yard.
Nowadays you can visit a mall anywhere and see at least five different people wearing gamer apparel, from the greased up old man to the emo kid sitting in the corner to the young teen girl in a short skirt. It’s no secret that acquiring clothing for your favorite game is easy; gaming is more mainstream and where there’s mainstream, there’s big money. Large video game companies like Bungie and Steam have high quality merchandise readily available for its fan base due to a demand. You can do a simple search on Ebay and come across thousands of gaming merchandise.
So I have to ask, when did it become so easy to get gamer apparel?
Running a search for a cool shirt years ago online would have yielded in poorly designed stuff from other countries. The pictures would fade after a wash or two, falling apart at the seams, and everything you expect of a cheaply made piece of merchandise. Being a female gamer, it was much more difficult to find clothing that matched what I wanted. Most, if not all, apparel was designed exclusively for guys as they were the intended target for video games. A guy’s small was too large for me and several other girl gamers. Places like Cafepress were our best friend since they sold women clothing and occasionally had video game related designs up. Even when female apparel became more common, one of the major problems was that clothing companies often made ‘female gamer merchandise’ nothing more than younger boy sizes. Most of my small and medium shirts are just very tiny guy shirts, which were quite uncomfortable.
Other gamers started to realize the lack of merchandise and started to create and sell their own. Penny Arcade was one of the first places I shopped for clothing, as not only was it game apparel but it had a sense of humor in it I enjoyed. Several other online websites started up, like ThinkGeek and J!NX, making it easier to acquire gamer apparel.
Somewhere along the way, gaming merchandise became hip and cool. I like to blame when Hot Topic started to sell gamer merchandise. Several of the pieces they would show in their store were incorrect. I recall several Super Mario Brothers shirts with mushrooms on it that were just fake, just to be hip and retro. A lot of the Legend of Zelda shirts they have produced have been incorrect as well. You can simply search for them online and you will see several threads on forums mocking them.
Now they have gamer shirts with ignorant phrases tied to lots of things. One of the popular shirt choices is one of Mario with the phrase, “I needed the coins”, which is tied in to why people do porn. You see these cheesy things online all the time, since most merchandise online is made by a person rather than a company. Then you walk into Hot Topic and see all these trendy shirts for $30 sporting the same cheaply-designed phrases.
That’s not the kicker though. A year ago, a famous clothing designer designed a Mario shirt that cost $175. What could possibly be worse than that? It was a FULL page ad printed on a shirt that looked like a terribly iron on. It was the first of many incidents repeated throughout the year. I visited a mall out here and saw right in a department store a leather jacket with bling on it of Yoshi for a couple hundred bucks by some designer whose name escapes me. There’s a lot of controversy online when it comes to gamers now as a huge rift is spread between the community. A majority of the people who wear the overpriced articles of clothing are people who don’t actually play games. There is still a small amount of gamers who do purchase these items though, but are frowned upon for disgracing the community.
What is the limit when it comes to buying gamer apparel? What is right and what isn’t? At this point in my life, I’m enjoying the large amount of merchandise available that I can purchase and wear. I’ll still get comments from random strangers about how they love the Gauntlet reference on a shirt of mine or people asking me who my favorite character from Zelda is. In the end, it’s more gaming merchandise which is never a bad idea. Some of it is good, though a majority of it is bad. Video games have become mainstream; it’s something we’ll have to get use to.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:36 am
Only ever bought a few shirts, but yeah, makes you feel special when someone comments on your awesome Mario or God of War shirt!
January 21st, 2008 at 4:39 am
A great read as always. Very honest, thats why I enjoy reading this blog so much.
Gaming t-shirts are hit and miss really. I enjoy letting everyone know that I loved playing Super Mario World and yet when I see a 13 year old kid in a shopping centre wear one I feel like a complete joke.
In Australia a clothing store called Jay Jays has been the first to start this trend down here. Unfortunately they charge $20 for a shirt. The problem is these shirts are extremely thin and fluff up after one wear. They are seriously poor quality clothes. Its a rip off how much they expect us to pay. Then again on the otherside I don’t want to miss out on some sweet gaming apparel. Its such a raw deal.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:15 am
Is it sad that one of my favorite gifts in the past few years was a Druid shirt from J!nx? If I had realized I would love it this much, I probably would have bought it myself a while ago.
To be honest, I think one of the reasons that gaming apparel is SO popular now is that, for a long time, it was not necessarily cool to be associated with video games. As video gaming has become more mainstream, acceptable, and even popular, those of us who remember what it was like to be ridiculed for our love of Duck Hunt/Tomb Raider/whatever have embraced these new articles of clothing — especially the ones that refer to OLD school games we loved — as badges of honor. Sort of a “I knew the band before they were cool” phenomenon.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:00 am
Yeah. That is why I don’t buy a lot of shirts online. Because I’m such a weird size. I might be able to fit in a small according to the sites that sell gamer shirts intended for guys, but if I go into any regular mall/department store, I have to buy a large. I’m only 5′2” and I’m not “fat.” Yes there is excess, but I carry it well.
But the makers of these sizes don’t seem to think so.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Mandel;
It really does! I have an older Penny-Arcade Gauntlet reference shirt and anytime I wear it out and get someone to comment on it, I’m excited. Gauntlet’s not even that popular of a game, but they always get the reference. I love it! Such a great way to make potential new friends as well.
Daniel;
I’m glad you enjoy reading GDG. I can relate with people who are much too young to understand the older video game series, but this generation of gaming has become so weird. People who are old enough to have played the earlier SNES games are instead big fans of the Wii, but then you have teenagers purchasing old Castlevania and fighting games on XBOX Live.
$20 doesn’t seem that bad compared to some places, but quality is everything. No point in purchasing a $20 shirt just to wear it once and have it be destroyed. Feels like you’re torn between two loyalties, saving money and sporting the gamer wear. I’ll have to check out this store though, I’ve yet to see much gamer apparel in places other than Hot Topic.
Phaelia:
J!NX shirts have been the most comfortable garments I’ve purchased online in years. Most of the material for female shirts have always been the thick cotton, but J!NX has that thinner material that feels so comfortable. My first taste of one was the Night Elf DANCE! shirt on the clearance rack at Hot Topic. It was $5, so I figured why not? Ever since then, I have been addicted to their shirts. I have personally purchased about 5 for myself and maybe around 10 gamer shirts for boys. I was really excited when they released a priest shirt finally! So far, the only complaint I have is in one of my shirts the seam has ripped a little.. but with an increase in my tailoring skill, it was really easy to fix. Enough rambling on about how much I love that company though, ha.
That was the conversation thread that sparked the idea of this article in my head. We’re sitting in Sears and see all these leather jackets with video game and Star Wars characters and I question outloud, “When did it become cool? I use to get my butt kicked for wearing this stuff!” I’m personally excited for more gamer apparel, especially if it matches the current style. Trendy or not, I like to feel I look good.
Kat;
That was the problem I had always encountered online earlier with incorrect sizing. One of my favorite shirts from a few years back feels like I’m putting on a small kids shirt anytime I do… and it’s considered a woman’s medium. I really hope more sites can start issuing a ’sizing’ meter to give people some idea. I think it would increase their profits.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I’ve never worn gamer apparel though I did have a coffee mug with the Half-life symbol on it. Got a lot of comments at work about it
February 5th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Every time I try to find gaming or anime shirts I can never find anything that fits. >_