Jo Malone, E.L.F. and CeraVe move inside the gaming experience

Subscribe to Jing Beauty to get the latest news on China's world of beauty and wellness. A perfume cannot travel through a screen, so Jo Malone London had the place it was supposed to evoke built inside Fortnite. For two weeks in August, players entering the creator map Minigame Box PvP could move through a rugged British coastline inspired by Sea Salt & Bergamot. The experience, developed with user-generated games company Chartis, translated the fragrance’s windswept campaign imagery into a landscape they could explore rather than simply watch in another perfume film. Across beauty, gaming collaborations are beginning to move beyond character licensing, limited-edition packaging, branded skins and virtual billboards. Recent projects have asked players to wash hair, treat breakouts, clean houses, build salons and learn what ingredients do, putting product knowledge inside the action rather than around it. The audience is already large enough on both sides of the Pacific to make that investment difficult to dismiss. The Entertainment Software Association’s 2026 US study found that 67% of Americans aged five to 90 play video games for at least an hour a week, with more than 80% of Gen Alpha and Gen Z doing so; the average US player is now 37. In China, the user base is larger still: the country had 684 million gamers as of June 2026, up 0.82% year on year, according to the Game Publishing Committee of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association. Domestic gaming revenue reached 188.45 billion RMB ($28.1 billion) in the first half of 2026, rising 12.17% year on year. “Not just beauty brands, but all brands must increase their investment into gaming because that is the digital channel of the future,” said Nethal Hashim, senior consultant at TD Reply. He points to gaming’s reach across generations, alongside increasing scrutiny of social platforms used by younger consumers, as reasons brands can no longer treat the channel as a niche youth experiment. “Beauty is already about experimenting with identity, appearance and routine,” said Kelly Vero, technical founder of Nak3d, a company that produces digital fashion for games and virtual worlds. “Games are immersive, much more than billboards: they let people participate in that process, rather than simply watch a campaign.” When the product becomes the game Recent projects suggest that the more natural entry point is often something the brand already knows how to do. L’Oréal South Africa has used Roblox to turn skincare concerns into challenges, including a Garnier game built around an unexpected breakout, while textured-hair brand The Doux built a virtual salon around consultations, washing and styling. In both cases, the gameplay borrows from the product category rather than simply placing branding inside a popular platform. “Remove the logo. If the gameplay still helps someone understand the product or the brand, it belongs there,” said Vero. “If nothing changes, the brand has bought scenery.” Branded gaming has no shortage of polished virtual spaces that give players little reason to stay. A store, billboard or oversized product can create visibility, but it does not necessarily make the brand relevant to the experience. Hashim describes the risk through gaming’s “magic circle,” the boundary between the logic of the game and the commercial world outside it. “Games are fun because they either create a sense of escapism, provide gamers with a challenge, or both,” he said. “It is crucial that brands do not break this magic circle by using the gaming environment inauthentically to push their products or services.” Kao’s “Silent Cleaning” took the idea to an unusually literal extreme. The 2025 horror title made cleaning products necessary tools as players worked through an inherited house while avoiding a monster, turning an everyday product demonstration into part of the challenge rather than interrupting it. The commercial response makes Kao particularly relevant to beauty marketers. Within 30 days, downloads reached seven times the company’s initial plan, and more than 3,200 related videos have since appeared, ITmedia reported in July. The agency that developed the game with Kao, said sales of some featured products doubled. The figures do not isolate exactly how much of that increase came from the game, but they move the conversation beyond views and visits toward actual consumer behavior. Beyond visits and dwell time Gaming campaigns are also beginning to produce different types of conversion depending on what a brand wants from them. A campaign for CeraVe, the L’Oréal-owned skincare brand, run in Israel across Roblox and Minecraft reached 1.5 million unique players and recorded a 10% lift in purchase intent in its brand-lift study, according to ReachPlayers, the in-game advertising company behind it. E.L.F. has used Roblox to move players further down the funnel. Developer eGEN says E.L.F. “UP!” has surpassed 21 million visits and generated tens of thousands of loyalty-programme registrations from Roblox users. That makes the membership number more useful than the headline traffic figure: the brand gained a way to continue speaking to some of those players after they exited the game. “The strongest activations let players do something connected to the product, then offer a relevant next step: save a look, join a community or shop what they’ve discovered,” said Vero. “Engagement on its own isn’t conversion. E.L.F. “UP!” is a good example: players can engage with the brand through play, and tens of thousands have gone on to become members. That tells us more than a visit count alone.” The same principle applies to measurement. “Measure each outcome separately: brand lift for awareness, what players learned for education, qualified sign-ups for acquisition and attributable sales for commerce,” Vero said. “Then compare the results with the full cost of building and maintaining the experience.” Roblox’s Shopify integration, introduced in May 2025, allows eligible US users to purchase physical products without leaving an experience. Fenty Beauty was among the first beauty brands to use it, selling an exclusive Gloss Bomb shade to players aged 18 and older until August 2025. Neither Roblox nor Fenty disclosed sales from the activation, so the existence of an in-game checkout should not be confused with proof of commercial efficiency. Hashim argues that the pressure to convert can itself become a problem if discount codes, rewards or purchase prompts interrupt the experience players came for. “There can of course be more direct ways of connecting a gaming activation to an online store through redeemable codes and rewards,” he said. “But these always have the danger of breaking the in-game reality.” Gentle Monster’s “Jentle Garden,” a 2022 mobile game made with Blackpink’s Jennie, offers a different model of fit. Rather than treating games as another distribution channel, the eyewear brand extended an already surreal, fashion-led visual universe into a format its audience could play. “The closer the fit between the brand, the gaming activation, and the targeted audience the more likely that the activation will create a credible path towards a purchase,” Hashim said. When games move into beauty In China, some of the most commercially interesting activity is happening in the opposite direction, with game companies using established characters and fan relationships to move into fragrance and personal care. Papergames’ “Love and Deepspace” has expanded from conventional game merchandise into perfumes, hand creams, lip balms, body products and makeup tools. Its character fragrances translate personalities into scent profiles, bottle shapes and collectible details, while newer personal-care launches bring the same character relationships into lower-priced products designed for everyday use. Fifteen fragranced personal-care products opened for pre-sale in September, including five hand creams, five lip balms and five body oil creams linked to the title’s five male protagonists. Names, scent profiles and product details correspond to individual characters, allowing fans to choose through character preference as much as conventional beauty criteria. For a traditional fragrance company, launching a perfume means introducing a scent, constructing a story and persuading consumers to form an emotional connection with it. “Love and Deepspace” begins with that relationship already established through months of gameplay, character development and interaction, then converts parts of it into a physical object. Publicly reported figures put cumulative sales of the game’s character fragrances above 237 million RMB ($33 million). The first fragrance, based on Rafayel, reportedly sold more than 200,000 bottles and generated around 87 million RMB ($12.2 million), while the subsequent Sylus perfume sold more than 350,000 bottles and exceeded 150 million RMB ($21 million) in sales. The opening of a dedicated Tmall flagship in September gives that merchandise a more permanent retail infrastructure. By late September, some character-linked personal-care products had surpassed 30,000 pre-orders, while several other products and beauty tools had crossed the 10,000 mark. Once those products leave the world of fandom and enter everyday routines, however, they face the same standards as any other beauty item. A consumer may order a hand cream because it represents a favourite character, but texture, moisturization, fragrance quality, packaging and price determine whether the experience still feels worthwhile after the novelty fades. Earlier this year, “Love and Deepspace” also faced discussion around the pricing and manufacturing background of its first perfume. The debate illustrated the limit of emotional pricing power: character attachment may justify a premium, but consumers still evaluate the scent, formula and overall value once the product is in their hands. Game IP therefore arrives in beauty with an advantage that conventional brands spend heavily to create — an existing emotional relationship — but that advantage cannot substitute indefinitely for product performance. From education to purchase Vero is currently working with a beauty client on a game that turns ingredient discovery into part of the experience rather than a lesson layered on top of it. “Players discover plants, learn what they’re associated with and gradually build a beauty ‘bible’; the knowledge comes through play, at the moment they’re curious about it,” she said. “Beauty brands could do the same with ingredients or routines, then offer the relevant real product once the player understands why they might want it.” The idea has particular relevance for categories where consumers already need guidance. Skincare ingredients, application order, hair techniques and fragrance notes can become puzzles, choices or stages of progression instead of copy on a product page, giving brands a chance to explain why a product exists before asking consumers to buy it. CeraVe’s brand-lift results, E.L.F.’s membership registrations, Kao’s reported sales increase and Fenty’s experiment with in-game commerce each sit at a different point along that journey. They also show why the success of branded gaming cannot be reduced to traffic alone: a campaign designed to teach should be judged differently from one intended to recruit members or sell products. For skincare, the useful mechanic may be understanding ingredients or building a routine; for haircare, it may be consultation and styling; for fragrance, a landscape can communicate the mood that a screen cannot transmit through smell. In each case, the product has to supply part of the reason to play.

Jo Malone, E.L.F. and CeraVe move inside the gaming experience

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Jo Malone, E.L.F. and CeraVe move inside the gaming experience

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