The Votes are In

I play this game on Facebook called Fashion Stories Boutique. It's a crafting game, for the most part, but recently, it added an option where you can vote for looks that players put together out of the clothing they own. This isn't an unusual thing for fashion games to do, but the way the voting system works is kind of unusual, and very telling.

In most fashion games, when you vote, you are supposed to vote for the look you like the best. Now, most of the time, you basically just vote for whatever is on the left (or right) and move on quickly because it takes so long for the looks to load. In FSB, it doesn't quite work this way. Instead, you're supposed to vote for whatever look you think is the most popular. That changes things quite a lot.

It also changes because the better you do, the more rewards you get. In standard voting games, you get rewards based on how many votes you give. Five votes equal five reward points. In this one, you are rewarded on how well you can determine which looks are the most popular. You have to guess ten looks correctly. You have three shots to fail. If you guess all ten, you get some significant stuff.

Admittedly, I like the rewards you can get from the better guesses. However, I hate the process. Quite often, I'm having to vote for looks I don't like as much, just because I know they fit the criteria of what I know will be popular. I also find that I am hating what that criteria happens to be. With any given two looks, some things always hold true.

• If a look has wings, it will win. This kind of sucks because it means that the people who have been playing longer will always win out over those who just started, even if the newer player crafted together a pretty cute look.
• If both looks have wings, the more unique and colorful wings will win. Again, this sucks because unique wings are kind of a chance thing to find. Even if the other person is in a really great outfit, unique wings will edge them out. There is only one reason this won't happen, and it's the most annoying trend of all.
• THE MORE MODEST OUTFIT ALWAYS WINS. That's right. The outfit that looks the least slutty will win over one that is perceived as slutty. Even if the model has the rarest wings and a magic stuff and anything else, if she's dressed in an outfit that shows a lot of boobs or leg, she will lose. 

This last point annoys me to NO end. For one thing, it's kind of difficult to come up with modest outfits on this game. I have dresses that show all the way up to the crotch. Most of my skirts are see through. Most of the underwear is too. Secondly, it enforces the standards of our slut shaming culture. This is even worse because this game is mainly played by women.

There is nothing the game can do about this either. The game itself can't force people not to vote for the modest looks. And while it could restructure the clothing to be somewhat more inclined to have longer skirts and higher necklines, that itself also re-enforces the modesty promotion. I'm not really sure there is an answer here other than changing the voting structure completely. But then it's just like everyone else's.