2021 in Review – Numbers, Insights, Updates
My dear readers,
As is becoming tradition, I want to use the opportunity of the year coming to an end to look back upon what happened on The Mane Quest these past twelve months, to share some stats and numbers and to give you all some insight into the life and work behind this website.
And holy crap, what a year it has been.
2021: A Rollercoaster
I don’t usually go into a ton of personal detail in my articles, but I feel the need to establish the context in which my TMQ work has taken place this year.
In January 2021, my father passed away after long weeks of hope and worry. Even apart from the emotional impact that had on me – both grief and relief were involved –, the death of a parent generates a ton of work, even more so when they leave you a house to take care of. Between organizing renovations and finding new tenants, my father’s house has become a part time job all by itself.
In the midst of all that, I’ve had to face the realization that my job at AirConsole was making me increasingly unhappy. That after 6 years of working at the party gaming startup, it was time to move on, and find new motivation for new work rather than further exhausting myself with a job I no longer felt creative energy for. I quit my job in March and had my last day in May, intending to give myself a much-needed break before searching for a new opportunity.
Opportunity ended up finding me, however: In April, I started working as a freelance consultant for Aesir Interactive. In July, I began freelance community & social media work for Tivola Games and their then-unannounced mobile horse racing game Wildshade.
As if that were not enough new and exciting things, I also found a new horse riding opportunity this Spring: My new lease horse Cleo, a nine year old Arabian mare with a mind of her own, has also taken up a lot of my time and energy, and presented me with a ton of new challenges, as well as a lot of joy.
Cleo and myself out on a ride this Summer.
And then in Fall, once my new responsibilities were appearing to be almost manageable, came yet another big change: I agreed to start a new position as Creative Producer at Aesir Interactive in November. But more on that and what it means in the Outlook section below.
There is something of a theme to all this: I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have all these new opportunities, but I also found myself beyond exhausted by simply trying to keep up with everything I wanted to do and had to do. I quit my job in March with the intention of giving myself a break, and ended up sliding from one new thing to the next. This has without doubt been the most stressful year of my life. It leaves me drained and tired, but also incredibly proud of all I’ve achieved and managed to weather, and optimistic for what’s to come next.
In conclusion: although I published some articles this year that I’m very happy with, I also simply often lacked the time and energy to give this website the attention in deserves. Let’s look at the stats.
2021 in Numbers
In 2021, The Mane Quest was visited by 163’000 people, making up about 300’000 page views.
Since the site went live in Fall 2018, there have been over 450’000 unique visitors, accounting for 830’000 page views.
The site had between 10’000 and 20’000 unique visitors every month this year, with January, May and August being the most active.
The top countries remain the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, followed by Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, Poland and Czechia, just like in the previous year. My fellow Swiss people make up for about 0.57% of users.
The gender balance remains similar too: 52.5% female visitors, 47.5% male. Google Analytics still does not account for other genders.
The younger demographic has grown a bit stronger this year, with about 38% of users being 18-24 years old and 30% of them in the 25-34 range.
Reader gender demographics 2020 vs 2021
Reader age demographics 2021
Comparison to previous years:
Top 10 Articles 2021, by page views
Best Horse Games 2020 (33K)
Best Horse Games 2019 (21K)
Wildshade Announcement (16K)
8 Common Horse Mistakes (11K)
Markt+Technik Interview (10K)
Top 10 Articles of all time, by page views
Best Horse Games 2019 (130K)
Best Horse Games 2020 (52K)
Very Far Away Horse (28.5K)
Wildshade Announcement (16K)
Star Stable Review #1 (14.5K)
Equestrian the Game Announcement (14.5K)
Top 10 Search Keywords 2021
The mane quest (3K clicks, 3.7K impressions)
Wildshade (2.6K clicks, 26K impressions)
Very Far Away Horse (2.5K clicks, 9K impressions)
Horse games (1.9K clicks, 174K impressions)
Best horse games (1.6K clicks, 10K impressions)
Horse games PC (1.5K clicks, 14K impressions)
Alicia online (1.4K clicks, 168K impressions)
Homophobic horse game (1.3K clicks, 9.7K impressions)
Horse isle 3 (1.2k clicks, 35.5K impressions)
Wild horse valley (900 clicks, 31K impressions)
Top 10 Referral Traffic Sources 2021
Facebook
Reddit
Twitter
YouTube
Instagram
Polygon
Steam Store
Kotaku
Alice Ruppert (Personal Website)
The Plaid Horse
The Horse Game Community
The TMQ Communities continue to grow: Our Discord is nearing 1000 members, the Facebook group is close to 7000 and even the GamesWithHorses subreddit has 500 subscribers now.
All in all, the growth of these communities has slowed down a little bit too. I think part of that is once again because I have not spent the same amount of effort in sharing invitations and awareness, but there’s also the aspect that my moderators and myself have grown more confident in setting and enforcing rules that make our communities manageable and pleasant, rather than getting and keeping as many members as possible.
My utmost love and appreciation to Agent, Bee, Cutty, Sophie and Kalma for running these places with me – especially with how busy I’ve been this year, I could not do it without you.
With my efforts on behalf of Wildshade, I’ve also been able to put my community management experience into further action! Hyping the game up before launch on TikTok and Instagram has been incredibly rewarding. The ease with which views, likes and follows have mounted on these platforms further reassures me that this genre is hungry for content – and that cute horse game screenshots are an absolute pleasure to promote. I’ve largely stepped back from Wildshade work since starting my new job, but I’m eagerly keeping my eyes and ears on the game and advising both the team and its new community manager wherever I can.
One topic that’s unfortunately been completely neglected among everything that’s happened are those Community Articles that I already mentioned in my last Yearly Review. I still intend to continue that project (and actually publish the content I’ve already been sent), but the whole thing is on ice until I have more TMQ-time again. I’ll keep you posted, thank you for your patience 🙈.
Other Highlights
Starting to work in horse game development “for real” has definitely been a major development this year, but there were a handful of other TMQ-related things that brought me a lot of joy:
My “8 Common Horse Mistakes” Listicle was shared by gaming website Kotaku, along with some appreciation for TMQ’s existence and its punny name! I greatly appreciate the bit of mainstream gaming press attention. Read here.
My article about Horse Isle 3 and its dubious community management is used as a citation on Horse Isle’s Wikipedia page. See here.
I was interviewed about The Mane Quest and the horse game genre by Hylke Langhout for the Indie Game Website. Read here.
I’m very proud of my Star Stable Online dev feature from October. Read here.
Outlook
So what is next in store for The Mane Quest and myself: At the time of writing, the majority of my time and energy goes into my new job at Aesir Interactive. In my position as Creative Producer, I work with a team of around 15 people on a horse game project. The game is not yet officially announced, but if you read my past articles about what’s in store for the company and follow the discussion in the dedicated channel on our Discord, you’ll get an impression of what to expect.
What I can tell you is this: I am convinced that what we’re making here is the most promising game this genre has seen in… well, ever, basically. This team has the people power, experience, resources and technical background to pull this off, and I am incredibly stoked to be part of the project. I cannot wait until I’m allowed to tell you all more. For now, I recommend you sign up as a playtester right here, though I can’t yet promise when we’ll be reaching out to more people on the list.
The job also comes with a ton of challenges: I joined an established team with established processes, joined a game dev project already halfway through development, am working directly with a publisher for the first time… the sheer overload of new information and new responsibilities have been a lot to take in, to say the least. I’m optimistic however, that I’ll have more time and energy again for “regular” TMQ work – meaning reviews, interviews, research etc. – as I get settled in. I should also note that my contract with Aesir explicitly allows me to continue consulting work for other companies, so I remain available for such opportunities.
What I want to emphasize for this year’s summary is that although my activity on the website has slowed down a bit, my efforts and involvement in horse game production have grown a lot more serious. Three years ago, TMQ started as a hobby, as an almost frivolous passion project, an outlet for me to have horse game opinions at the handful of people interested in them. Telling people in real life that I had a horse game website always felt at least a little bit silly and self-indulgent.
This year, horse games have become my actual job. And that still feels a bit surreal to be honest.
I’m facing the end of this year tired but happy, and confident that 2022 will bring us quite the handful of exciting horse game news. Thank you all for joining me on this wild ride.
Here’s to another one. 🥂
I am absolutely thrilled to share an exclusive game announcement with you: Tivola has been working on a brand new mobile horse game, and here is your TMQ-exclusive first look at it.