Are Gamification Efforts Worthwhile For Fashion Brands, Including Coach?

In a recent feature produced by Forbes contributor Moin Roberts-Islam, the recent news that Coach was engaging in a gamification collaboration with EA’s “The Sims 4” was discussed at length, both in terms of its particulars as well as broader takes on whether such efforts were fruitful or not.

First, Roberts-Islam tackled some of the more obvious elephants in the room: The spectacular failure-to-launch and excessive hype surrounding the preceding NFT trend. Then, he asked a question: “What if the point of digital fashion isn’t to be owned, but to be everywhere?”

“So when Coach announces a new digital fashion move, launching today, it’s worth paying attention, not because it’s ‘fashion enters gaming’ (that headline is tired), but because of how it’s doing it. Coach isn’t launching a limited NFT wardrobe; it’s launching an open‑access collection inside ‘The Sims 4,’ available globally to all players on 13th January. In the NFT era, that line would have sounded like a missed revenue opportunity,” Roberts-Islam wrote.

“And that may be the most luxury‑coded move of all in 2026: not selling digital scarcity, but distributing culture at scale,” he added, noting that Coach had captured some serious brand heat with younger consumers in the real world.

Coach x ‘The Sims 4’: The First of Many ‘Visibility’ Plays for Mind Share?

Again comparing and contrasting the exclusivity and hoarding aspect of NFT fashion or art sales versus this latest partnership between Coach and the latest entry in the longstanding Sims IP, Roberts-Islam noted that visibility was the cornerstone of this particular play by the fashion brand.

“Your outfit matters because someone screenshots it, shares it, remixes it, comments on it, and builds a story around it,” he began.

“That is what makes Coach x ‘The Sims 4’ interesting. Coach is launching what it describes as a ‘co‑created open‑access designer collection’ for The Sims 4, featuring items from ready‑to‑wear plus its Tabby and Brooklyn bags. There is also a ‘Coach Trunk’ object designed to unlock mood‑driven looks. In other words, this isn’t a digital collectible designed to be scarce; it’s a brand kit designed to be used,” he added.

As was pointed out by the author, while other brands had made plays for their own piece of the gaming pie, “The Sims 4” offers a different scale to be measured by entirely. The game has reached 70 million players worldwide, and provides a largely open-world and imaginative sandbox play experience that lends itself naturally to shared aesthetic and visual content generated by players themselves.

Given that the Coach assets are entirely free, boasting an “open access” approach to increased visibility, and that younger consumers are more likely to be engaged with “The Sims 4” more generally, this experiment is perhaps timely.

“Open access was a deliberate choice grounded in Coach’s belief in self-expression and inclusivity. The Sims 4 is a platform built on personal storytelling, and we wanted our presence there to feel expansive and welcoming to the entire community,” Coach’s VP of Marketing (North America), Kimberly Wallengren, told Roberts-Islam. “By making the collection broadly accessible within the game environment, we’re able to engage a wide, global audience in a way that aligns with how people already explore identity and build confidence through digital play.”

Gen Z Driving Coach Parent Tapestry’s Booming Growth

Coach parent Tapestry picked up 2.2 million new customers in Q1 2026, with more than one-third (35%) belonging to Gen Z. Further analysis of the numbers suggested that younger customers both exhibited “a higher retention rate” as well as the ability to influence all other generations of shoppers. As the Forbes contributor underscored, Reuters suggested that the hugely successful quarter was spurred by “wealthier Gen Z shoppers snapping up Coach’s Tabby handbags at full price.”

“Our previous gaming activations showed us that Gen Z are looking to use brands like Coach as an outlet to express their identity and who they are,” Wallengren added, with Roberts-Islam following up to ask the question of whether digital fashion would ever actually be a significant revenue stream.

To which, according to him, the answer may end up being irrelevant.

“We are watching the runway model unravel. The collection is still designed top‑down, but the meaning of it is created bottom‑up. The drop is still timed, but the afterlife is community‑driven. This distinction matters: the brands that own the next wave will not necessarily be the ones who sell the most digital items, but the ones who make their design codes the easiest to use, remix and share, without friction,” Roberts-Islam opined.

“Coach’s ‘Sims 4’ collection is a small launch with a big signal: in 2026, the most quietly powerful word in luxury might be ‘open‑access.’ We thought digital fashion would be sold like sneakers, but it may be distributed like memes,” he concluded.