Street Fighter Fashion

Via Destructoid, I’ve found out that some fancy British fashion place has decided to use an interesting marketing campaign to sell its high-priced clothes. Seems that they’ve taken a page out of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, mocking up fake 2-D fighting graphics of models looking quite snappy in clothes that cost more than a month of my salary. Be sure to click over to Destructoid to check the images.

Now, on the one hand, if they’re trying to attract those who play video games to step into their hallowed halls, this might seem like it’ll backfire. Silly fashion retail outlets – don’t you know that we’ve already spent all of our cash on motion controllers, the latest game in a hit franchise, or cases upon cases of Bawls? Considering gaming is an indoor hobby, wherein you are not required to look good, just talk like you look good, my first thought is not to wear an Armani while killing other players in Left 4 Dead.

Still, let’s put all that aside and think about this for a second. If a high class place like Harvey Nichols can see the value in creating marketing using video games, perhaps there’s hope for their perception yet. It’s clear that most times you hear about video games in a news outlet that doesn’t have a cool-sounding brand name (ala Kotaku, Joystiq, and the like) it’s normally to say that games caused something bad, whether it’s violence, death, or or puppy dogs to keel over and die. The fact that we rarely see games or gaming in a positive light means that people are sometimes predisposed to the whole video games = the devil argument, even before they open a piece of news about it.

Finding practical applications for games and video gaming in general is probably not the thing that will necessary attract your normal Halo or Madden fanboy, but what it will do is make people look at games twice as a way to market, sell, or otherwise bring value to things. Why wouldn’t you want to see Mario marketing better plumbing tools and utilities? What about Tetris as a viral marketing campaign to sit together pieces to create a logo for a movie? Imagine the possibilities of GTA’s Niko Bellic was selling the best and latest cars.

Ok, well….maybe NOT that last one…but you get my drift. Many times, people forget that while video games are a pasttime and a hobby, they’re also a type of media – media that can be used by anything from a clothier like Harvey Nichols to practical services like grocery stores, banks, and more. The more video games and gaming can break intot hese markets, the more forgiving people will be when they see that a 7 year old injured himself trying to do a Dragon Punch. So buy a pair of socks or something at Harvey Nichols if you can – it’ll show them that displaying Chun-Li and Cammy ripoffs has some market movement, right?