Goodbye, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood

Stardom: Hollywood was a casual mobile game, offered in the App Store and Google Play, that I came across sometime in high school. It was released by Glu Mobile in February 2013 and described as a journey from "nobody to A-list celebrity" through a series of satirical storylines, eccentric characters, and some bitchin' premium content− if you're into exchanging your very real money for virtual goods (Are you there Logan Huntzberger? It's me, Rory Gilmore. 💌) Since I was exclusively a play-for-free user at the time, I seemed to always find myself quickly climbing to the top of the ladder, achieving A-lister status, and restarting my game with a brand new doll whenever I got bored. It was only natural that when Kim Kardashian: Hollywood hit the scene on June 24, 2014, I'd be as quick as any teenage girl to get started on the newest re-imagining of Glu's already addictive role-playing game. I've never been an avid fan of the KJ clan, but it would be foolish to say that I've never been influenced by them. I've seen (and enjoyed) numerous episodes of Keeping Up (Scott carried). Though I wasn't rocking a bob, I did dye my clip-in extensions an ombre teal-blue combination in 2013 and you already know whose photo I referenced at the salon. And of course... my beloved Kim Kardashian: Hollywood (or KKH for short).

While I think there's a lot to be said about KKH's gameplay, games in general geared towards women (formally called "Pink Games" by some), and the importance in all of this when discussing media preservation− there's not much more that I could say about whether KKH is a "good" game or not. Glu managed to rake in $160 million by 2016 and maintained a cult fanbase for a solid decade. The hype would decrease over time, as the company's "$43.4 million in a quarter" would dwindle to a mere "$8.1 million a quarter" (1) by 2018. Although it's impossible to know just how many paying users were at the time of the announcement that KKH would discontinue, I do know that there was at least 1 sorry bitch shelling out $2.99 for a Triple Threat Deal every once in a while (3 Tickets to enter Show Your Style, 10 K-Stars, and 5 Diamonds... I couldn't resist! And I regret nothing 👀).

Plenty of reviews slamming KKH were written upon its release and this is easy to do with just about any product that the KJ's slap their names on. Ugh, what now? Another product to make us feel bad about ourselves? What must the working conditions be like? Were any of these ideas stolen? These criticisms against the mogul family can be valid, but Kim's fame is irrelevant when debating how fun KKH is or whether its success was truly earned. Stardom was already a fun and addictive game. Brendan Keogh defended the game in Australian literary journal, Overland, stating (2), "[They] scoff that such a game would exist in the first place, or that people would be so stupid as to play it, disregarding the game’s many successes... I’ve seen some dismiss it as a mere ‘reskin’ of the publisher’s previous game... It is an issue I don’t recall arising when Tony Hawk sold his name and likeness to Tony Hawk Pro Skater. But when a woman celebrity endorses a video game that will mostly appeal to young women, the fact a celebrity’s name is attached to the game becomes an unforgivable offence." Kim made a good business deal with a company that had some talented animators and story writers. That's all and it's okay, too. Theories suggesting that this was just another narcissistic business scheme for the KJ's to distribute to their simpleton fanbases are often just rooted in misogyny and general annoyance from the over-saturated media coverage surrounding anything this family does, literally ever. For a game that does a fair amount of yanking at Kim's (platinum) chain, I'm not so sure it's her neck that people need to keep their heels on.

Longevity won here and the game's most loyal players are the ones who made it out with the baddest and most stylish dolls (often spending $0 on the game, at all). When KKH was first released, some journalists called the game boring, dull, and repetitive− much like the droning life of an actual influencer, stuck in an endless doom-scroll for the sake of entrepreneurship. Paul Tassi highlighted this for Forbes in 2014 (3), "I finally climbed to the # 1 spot on the A-list... And then...there was nothing. No reward, no achievement, nothing..." What reviewers often got wrong was simply not being able to fathom that, at the end of the day, people just wanted a bomb-ass dress-up game. Due to how massively successful the game ended up being, Glu also kept KKH regularly updated with new stories. Even when a player finished their story mode, they had various gigs they could continue, as well as other in-game features to participate in.

I would often restart the old format of this game in Stardom due to running out of things to do, but this worked against me in my 10 years of on-and-off playing KKH. I hardly ever paid attention to dialogue and very quickly tapped through any story. Even while doing this, after restarting my game about 2 years ago, I didn't get to finish my storyline before the Sunset Notice was posted! When Glu finally made their announcement, one player told Vice (4), "I understand mobile games don't last forever but the way they went about it was such a slap in the face. This is what ten years of loyalty gets us? It feels like a bad breakup where I didn't get the closure I wanted." Fans who played the long game were far from bored during this game's infamous 10-year run. There was always something going on to feed this playful addiction− between the squads, Show Your Style events, Seasons, Kollections, Kim's Birthday Sale, and running roughly 18 different businesses and over 30 estates...? Boring isn't the word. 🌴 Baby, it was always sunny in Calabasas.

KKH has made its mark and will forever belong to a long legacy of digital dress-up games. However, humans playing dress-up is far from new. The earliest examples of paper dolls can be traced back to 900 AD and by the 1990's, this would turn into trashy online "pink games" that were rampant with issues (re: body image, lack of diversity, and hyper-gendered themes). Mariam Naziripour addresses this in a now archived Kill Screen article (5), "The slender aryan standard of feminine beauty dominates the representation of women everywhere, an impossible ideal reinforced through the tools of play, from video games to dolls. This narrow-minded vision of beauty hurts everyone, particularly the children who grow up playing with toys that teach their appearance as undesirable and secondary to true beauty." These issues were also never exclusive to online gaming. I truly wonder how long it will take for toy brands to work up the courage to design dolls that are curvier than a "slim-thick" body type− especially when supermodels like Precious Lee and Paloma Elsesser exist.

The effects that video games have on children have always been a hot topic both in academic and pop culture spaces. For games like KKH, where players are role-playing as famous influencers and models, is it useful to examine what this can communicate to children about the kind of work they should aspire to, or simply overbearing? According to a report by Nurist Surayyaa & Djoko Setyabudia on adolescent materialism (6), "Reports based on surveys of children in the US and the UK reveal that 'being rich' is children’s top ambition (Brown & Schor in Dittmar, 2008)... Studies also indicate that more materialistic youth tend to shop more and save less (Goldberg et al, 2003), as well as be compulsive buyers (Dittmar, 2005)." Both children and adults are vulnerable to marketing tactics that pick at our insecurities and tug on our heartstrings. Buy this to be Cool, Sexy, Popular. 🍸 (And most importantly, maintain the status quo.) They go deeper by stating that children can start to "perceive that more possessions could bring them more fun and more friends... They begin to understand the value of possessions based on social meaning, significance, and scarcity (Chan, 2006)." Essentially, children are learning earlier than ever that clout is a form of social currency that can potentially be traded to obtain wealth. If they're active in modern mobile gaming, then they're also being subjected to excessive advertising and microtransactions at a critical time in their growth. Admittedly, the combination of all of these factors is risky and something to be aware of. Young people should be actively learning that wealth and fame are fleeting, and glorified depictions of these lifestyles are often not based in reality.

This doesn't mean I think children should not have access to dress-up or fashion games. The days of celebrity and influencer life being mystified and glamorized are on its way out. It's also time to admit that our society's reliance on phones has shifted. For instance, I found KKH to be quite soothing, and this could easily be the case for a lot of young players as well. As Ruth Curry put it for Brooklyn Magazine (7), "... it’s certainly a stretch to call Kim Kardashian: Hollywood evil in a world where Call of Duty exists, or even vapid when Candy Crush and 2048 are also bestsellers." 🎮 Tapping away at this little game and playing dress-up at 3 AM, when I was dealing with insomnia, was one of the small luxuries I got to enjoy. Rather than contemplating my existence during my lunchtime, KKH was my fantasy-world escape and it kept me grounded. After 10 years of gameplay though, sometimes it's not so bad to remember to touch grass and get a fuckin' life.

The long history and slow progress surrounding dress-up games certainly don't help build a case for the genre to finally earn the respect it deserves from gaming platforms and large companies who frankly, don't know what a good fashion game is. KKH only slightly differed from some of the shallower trends, but the game did allow players to choose from over 42 skin tones (even alternative hues around Halloween-time− like pinks, blues, and greens), a range of different textured hairstyles (which got problematic at times), and the freedom to choose your doll's in-game sexuality (which you never have to commit to). You could call these efforts performative, but it also didn't outright erase or isolate a diverse audience of players. KKH is not an open-world online game, so having the freedom to design your doll how you want, is a personal form of self-expression for some. As far as preventing past mistakes, KKH did OK and I hope large toy and game companies continue to hire people who are genuinely interested in fashion. Glu hit the nail on the head as far as including in-game cameos from the likes of Olivier Rousteing and the late André Leon Talley 🤍. When developers are able to create products that appeal to consumers and their needs, it pays off in a big way. Often companies won’t offer anything more than token efforts, as the general public remains reluctant to cast their products aside. However, I think consumers deserve to demand better products from the companies they continue to buy from (or stop supporting them overall), rather than learning to swallow our needs.

To understand how far dress-up & fashion gaming has come, you have to know the history. For most of us, this all started with a sweet little plugin called Adobe Flash. 👾 Its reign has long come to an end, when Adobe announced in 2017 that it would be discontinued and wiped from supported systems by 2020, but its height would forever change what people thought the Internet was capable of. Designer Marty Spellerberg told Wired about his early days working with the program (8), "You could pair a visual to a programming action... It tied those two ideas together, which I think was an important hook for a lot of visual artists to get involved. We didn’t even know we were programming – we thought we were just learning Flash." It was at this time that popular gaming platforms were founded, such as Newgrounds, AddictingGames, and Miniclip (home to the famous Club Penguin, before Disney's acquisition in 2007). On sites like these, you could sometimes find a "for girls" section with generic games containing "feminine" themes 🩰 (often centering dress-up, makeup, fashion, and childcare). Large toy brands, such as Barbie and PollyPocket, all tried their hand at creating good online dress-up games, but none would ever come close to games, like Dollz and Stardoll, which were two of the biggest dress-up games of 90's and 00's, respectively.

The fun would come to a tragic end when Steve Jobs released his open letter titled "Thoughts on Flash" in 2010, basically stating that the iPhone and Adobe Flash could simply never be. It's hard to complain, because... I mean literally, people were not using it anymore. By 2017, Flash usage amongst Google Chrome users decreased (9), "from 80% to only 17% over a three-year period." A clear line had been drawn in the sand, but the impact of Adobe Flash will always hold meaning in Internet history, and preservationists have been creating efforts that ensure that this isn't forgotten. Internet Archive, famous for its Wayback Machine, currently utilizes a Flash emulator called Ruffle that runs on desktop systems and modern browsers. Flashpoint Archive is an offline gaming program that allows Flash files to function by imitating the original web servers these games ran from. According to Alex Handy, director of the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment who spoke to Wired in 2020 (10), "The early history of game archiving is 100 percent pirates... The Atari ST—a computer system from the mid '80s—the only reason we have all the software for that system is because pirates cracked it, compressed it, and put it on floppy discs." 💾 It's only a matter of time before people take matters into their own hands when we've seen several media & art industries continuously fail to take historical concerns seriously. The world of online gaming preservation is a bit of a nightmare, but it takes a courageous team to fight for a history that is being left behind, and therefore their work deserves to be recognized and talked about.

What scares me most about mobile gaming is the fact that we could very well lose all of it one day. "Thoughts on Flash" sealed a dark fate for Adobe's plugin and in turn, secured a future where mobile applications rule supreme and we rely more than ever on our phones. 📱 According to GamesIndustry.biz revealed (11) that mobile gaming makes up "more than half of consumer spending in the industry," but there's many variables that complicate the fight for better archival resources for these games. PocketGamer.biz interviewed media research professor, James Newman who explained (12), "Most mobile titles are 'born digital' so there is no physical medium to work with. In these cases, acquiring code means working with rights holders and then deciding which versions of games should be preserved." Nothing is permanent, but there's a reason archivists are working so hard to rescue these past relics. I'm sure there are plenty of gamers who would not classify something as trivial as Dollz or Stardoll as important enough for archival pursuit, but fuck them. OG dress-up game sites get to remain accessible to everything thanks to resources like Internet Archive. Hopefully these memories lead to artists and gamers alike continuing to reflect on what fashion and dress-up gaming was, what the end of KKH means today, and how to continue creating these games with our digital future in mind.

Modern mobile gaming sucks. I'll likely never find a game in the App Store that I was as loyal to as KKH− the ads are simply too much. While I am upset, I probably won't mourn the loss for too long, and instead try to consider who this change could be liberating for. I doubt the writers and animators for these games have much to do with the tactics large gaming companies use to gain revenue. It's even possible they could be taken advantage of themselves and the larger consequences of this are worth considering. Jessica DeFino (not associated with Glu) penned for Vice just one of the many recounts about working on projects for the KJ clan (13). "Was the company strategically leveraging the cheap labor of young, eager-to-please editors before bringing on more experienced, expensive leaders? At the time, I didn’t question it or care... I embraced any and all extra responsibilities that came my way, even training my own supervisors when they were eventually hired... Kim Kardashian told Variety that 'nobody wants to work these days,' but... [in] an aesthetic analog of the American dream, it’s those who are already in power that profit. The rest of us keep running on empty." It's easy to forget that we're all in the same boat, when there are so many things to distract ourselves with today. Why am I allowed to invest so much time and money in something created at the expense of my peers? Creators like Dong Nguye, who released one of the most infamous mobile gaming apps in history (Flappy Bird), are important to remember here. Released in the Spring of 2013 and leading the gaming charts for a short month in 2014, this game was short-lived, as harassment towards the creator reached an extreme. The game was removed from all app stores in February of 2014... And for what? Driving talented people away from the gaming community is counterproductive, as far as preservation goes. Especially when it results in perfectly fun games no longer being accessible to the public.

When considering the future of "pink gaming," I think it's important to gather what players are in desperate need of. Those who use games like KKH as a primary source of instant gratification or utilize it like a slot machine are better off without it. Fashion gaming deserves to live on, though. Kill Screen reported (5), "As with dress-up games, the sole problem is not the narrative theme. The real problem is that games have fallen into a pit of lazy play driven by traditional masculinity; driving, fighting, killing. There are no tags or categories on Steam for Fashion or Makeup. There are, however, tags for 'Not a Game' and 'Walking Simulator.' We are constantly innovating our approach to playing and yet play coded as feminine is still systematically disparaged, overlooked, and undervalued." As I've said, I tapped through KHH so fast, I missed most of the dialogue and I don't care. What I wanted was a good game with an impossible amount of clothes to keep track of, a plethora of cute hairstyles, and a goddamn pink Rolls Royce.

Ultimately, I'm scared. Watching cinema slowly surrender to streaming culture just after graduating from film school has not made it easier to remain hopeful (strikes, low pay, poor conditions− including A-list stars), and it would be a shame for other mediums to not learn from these mistakes. It has become so easy for gaming companies to create games with gambling systems, giving players the "exclusive" chance to experience a false sense of satisfaction with digital goods− all of which can be shut down in a moment's notice. The promise of instant gratification is always with us, whether through text messaging, social media, and now mobile gaming. Internet and gaming archiving needs to be taken as seriously as buying physical music, films, and antique equipment. Consumers have to invest and fight to keep these resources alive, just as much as the archivists, historians, and superfans who keep these legacies alive. As a user, I truly hope large gaming companies can eventually move away from these manipulative money-grab tactics. I also hope that both gamers and developers continue to keep this history alive, so we can all continue to learn from the past, in more ways than one. 🎀

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Read Our Sources:

1. Notopoulos, K. The Kardashian Apps Are Shutting Down Because Content Doesn’t Pay. BuzzFeed News. December 20, 2018.

2. Keogh, B. In praise of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Overland literary journal. August 4, 2014.

3. Tassi, P. Beating 'Kim Kardashian: Hollywood' Reveals The Sad Truths Of Celebrity Life. Forbes. August 9, 2014.

4. Thomas, H. Kim Kardashian's Mobile Game Is Shutting Down. Players Aren't Happy. Vice Media. January 10, 2024.

5. Naziripour, M. The awfulness and the importance of the dress-up game. Kill Screen. February 26, 2014.

6. Surayya, N., & Setyabudi, D. (2016). The Significance of Playing Dress Up Games on Children's Materialism. European Journal of Social & Behavioural Sciences, 16, 2101-2115. 2016. https://doi.org/10.15405/EJSBS.188.

7. Curry, R. Toward A Unified Theory Of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Brooklyn Magazine. September 10, 2014.

8. Bedingfield, I. The rise and fall of Flash, the annoying plugin that shaped the modern web. Wired. September 18, 2019.

9. Hansford, A. The end of Flash: What legacy will it leave behind? GamesIndustry.biz. January, 11, 2021.

10. D'anastasio, C. The Ragtag Squad That Saved 38,000 Flash Games From Internet Oblivion. Wired Magazine. February 6, 2020.

11. Sinclair, B. Is game preservation a losing battle? GamesIndustry.biz. July 5, 2022.

12. Harding, L. "Save game?" The quest to preserve classic mobile games forever. PocketGamer.biz. July 27th, 2023.

13. DeFino, J. I Worked My Ass Off for the Kardashian-Jenner Apps. I Couldn’t Afford Gas. Vice Media. April 12, 2022.