The third Costume Jam interview is here, and we've got another special guest! Ola Rogula, founder of Doll Divine and Meiker, is here to offer her perspective on the development of the genre. Like DressUpGames.com, Doll Divine boasts a well-curated selection of games with good-looking graphics and wide arrays of options, as well as Ola's own games both drawn by her and commissioned from other artists. After the shutdown of Flash, she took it a step further by founding Meiker, where artists can create dress-up games of their own using just a PSD file with special codes in the layer names, and submit them to be playable on the site. Let's dive in!
When and where did you get your start making dress-up games? How do those origins compare to how dress-up games are now?
I started dabbling in dress ups when I was in college, around 2002. I was already familiar with Flash from making websites, and I saw that Flash dress up dolls were just starting to be a thing. Previously, it was the era of pixel "dollz", the ones where you drag around gifs on the page. I already knew what Flash is capable of, so when I realized it could be used for dress up games, I got really excited. Flash made it easy to add multiple skin tones and make each hairstyle in 20 colors, so I basically started making the games I wanted to play and went from there.
The death of Flash was really tragic, I think, because Flash allowed very novice creators to make something very complex and powerful, that just worked. Now it's all become a lot more convoluted. That's why I made meiker.io... to give people the tool that I wished I had if Flash wasn't around (since it's not). The idea is that artists can focus 100% on creation and don't have to worry hardly at all about coding.
What do you consider to be your specialty as a creator and curator of dress-up games?
I try to really hyper focus on two things: beautiful artwork and a powerful character maker, both in terms of my own games and curating the games of others. If you have something that has both, that's the holy grail. But those games are rare so I appreciate when a game at least has one or the other.
In terms of genres, my personal inclination is towards fantasy and historical/world games. I do love modern fashion but I'm not as hip as many, so I make an effort to stay on top of things, because those games are very popular. Games that echo real life really resonate with players.
You’ve been at this for long enough that this is a full-time job. What does a typical work day look like for you?
Right now I am co-parenting with my ex-husband so we do week-on and week-off. When the kids are here, I can only really work for the 6 hours while they're at school. When they're at they're dad's, I basically work all the time. This is all new though which is why you haven't seen much work from me lately, but that's about to change very quickly. I love my job and I love what I do. It's like a religious devotion lol.
This may be a touchy question, but what relationship have you had with your player base or users?
Amazing, overall. I feel like me and my players are all one hive mind sometimes. We are all nerds who love to escape to a fantasy land or just express ourselves in a creative way. I would say that 99.99% of my interactions with players have been positive or amazing. Occasionally there is drama but it's usually because the person is going through a tough time emotionally and needs a target to dump their frustration on. Sometimes I'm that target and that's okay. All public figures take their turns being the target lol.
Where do you think the genre is going in the future? What would you personally like to see more of?
We are finally seeing more professional games built around dressing up, which is both wonderful and horrible. Some of these games have an abundance of absolutely incredible artwork. But on the other hand, they are all monetized in a very meticulous way, designed to bleed you dry. I play an interior design app called Redecor and I've been addicted to it for two years. But you can progressively see them tweaking things to squeeze more money out of you and it's an icky feeling. These games aren't going away, but I do hope that indie games can continue to thrive along-side them because they provide a slightly different value proposition. The rise of tools like meiker and picrew is definitely strengthening the ability of indies to come up in the industry. We just need more tools to help the creators get paid for their hard work. That's something that's a part of the long-term meiker goals.
It's been a couple years now since you started the website Meiker.io for people to create their own dress-up games. What have you learned about the artist community and even the medium of dress-up games itself since you began?
Interestingly, not much has surprised me. I can see the same type of creatives using meiker as the ones using Flash back in the day. Trends and technologies change but the core groups of people are surprisingly consistent! The same themes are evergreen... More female than male games. Current modern fashion trends. Elves, mermaids and fairies. I suppose games exploring the diversity of human gender expression are much more popular now. I feel like I'm meeting up with the same people, just in a new building haha.
Next interview will hopefully be posted this upcoming weekend. See you then!
-Theta