By Savan Saiya-Cork
April 5, 2025
Open-world games are known for their large map sizes and challenging combat systems, but what if there was an open-world game that embraced femininity and whimsicality? Enter: Infinity Nikki.
Infinity Nikki is a free-to-play live service game that advertises itself as “the coziest open-world game.” The game is the latest title in the 12-year-old Nikki series which began as paper doll-style mobile dress up games. Although the new game has plenty of other mechanics and features, Infinity Nikki stays true to the series’ roots with a robust system of dress up mechanics.
Although the Infinity Nikki team has stated that the game is meant for everyone, it’s easy to see that the game was designed with women in mind. The game has outfits from different trends that have popped up in women’s fashion like the Japanese gyaru and western cottagecore styles. From jeweled ball gowns to cowgirl costumes, Infinity Nikki embraces a wide variety of feminine clothing styles.
In many games, women are designed with outfits that act as performances of femininity, mainly for the sake of men who want to look at beautiful women. But Infinity Nikki’s clothing designs have more depth and a wider range of styles than other triple-A-style video games. The clothes are more than decorations meant to convey feminine allure — they’re tools for the players to use in creating their own designs. In short, Infinity Nikki answers the call for games that cater to the female gaze.
But what exactly is the female gaze? According to the Oxford University Press, the female gaze is “The ways in which women and girls look at other females, at males and at things in the world. This concerns the kinds of looking involved, and how these may be related to identification, objectification, subjectivity and the performance and construction of gender.” This definition provides ample room for interpretation as to how artists understand and manifest the female gaze in their work.
Infinity Nikki’s mere existence shows an immense amount of social progress in the gaming industry. In an industry where only 25% of workers are women, it’s unlikely that the majority of studios are creating games that accurately speak to the experiences and desires of girlhood and womanhood, which is a shame because women make up half the world’s population of gamers. Hopefully Infinity Nikki’s success will usher in a new generation of games created with the female gaze in mind.
Savan Saiya-Cork is a senior studying journalism and professional and public writing. Outside of her classes she is active in student governance and activism as the president of the MSU Campus Interfaith Council.