Video Game Hall Of Fame Inducts Barbie Fashion Designer, Rejects Modern Warfare

thegamer.com:

The Video Game Hall Of Fame of Rochester New York has announced its 2023 inductees. In a field that included the likes of Angry Birds, Call of Duty, FIFA, Quake, and GoldenEye, Barbie Fashion Designer beat out the competition to secure its place in video game history.

There's no denying the importance of GoldenEye 007 bringing first-person shooters to consoles, and nobody is saying Angry Birds isn't a billion-dollar franchise, but Barbie Fashion Designer did something that none of these games could: it brought gaming to young girls in an age where gamers were almost exclusively males.

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By today's standards, Barbie Fashion Designer doesn't offer a lot in terms of gameplay. You mostly dress up the titular Barbie using outfits, colors, and accessories and then have her walk down a virtual runway. There was also an option to turn your digital creations to life using an inkjet printer on specially designed fabric that came with the Barbie Fashion Designer CD.

The game basically mimicked what young girls were already doing with real-life Barbie, but it worked. Barbie Fashion Designer would sell half a million copies during its first two months of sale, which was more than both Doom and Quake. It was the sixth best-selling PC game of 1996 and sold over 600,000 copies by the end of its first year of sale.

That's not to say Barbie wasn't without faults. You could criticize the game for perpetuating some unfortunate stereotypes, but you could also argue that Barbie Fashion Designer paved the way for character customization as a mechanic--something that appeals to more than just women. You can also see elements of Barbie Fashion Designer in modern