2022 in Review – Stats, Insights and Updates
Dearest readers,
Let me continue my tradition of using this “time between the years” – that’s what German-speakers call the time between Christmas and New Year’s – to summarize what happened on The Mane Quest this year, provide some website statistics and share some reflections.
Website Statistics
As you can see in the table and graph above, 2022 has been another quieter year on TMQ compared to the explosive increase in traffic we saw in 2020. A sign that interest in horse games is waning? Hardly, if you ask me: While virality and search trends (and the occasional global pandemic that leaves people bored at home) definitely influence my site’s traffic, I also see a very straightforward causation between the work I put in and the attention I get.
When I actively write and promote content, it gets seen. But since my article output was lower this year than the years before, traffic stays humble as a result. This wasn’t always the case, as we can see from the 2019 stats (twice the articles than 2022 but far fewer visitors), but now that I’ve built up a comfortable following, I can expect more attention on individual new articles – when I have time to post them.
We’ll get into the reasons behind the decreased activity further below, let’s have a look at some more numbers first:
In 2022, The Mane Quest was visited by about 138’000 people, making for about 268’000 page views
Since its launch in Fall 2018, there have been over 593’000 visitors, accounting for 1’100’000 page views
TMQ has gotten between 11’000 and 19’000 visitors each month this year, with March and September being the most active time periods
The peak day on TMQ this year was February 11th, caused by this PC Gamer article on Red Dead Online trail riding and this post about it on Reddit
TMQ is visited by almost as many women as men: 49.7% of its visitors are female, 50.3% are male. (as per Google Analytics, other genders are not accounted for)
About 36% of TMQ users are between 18 and 24 years old, the 25-34 group makes up for 30% of users.
About 40% of TMQ traffic comes from the USA. The next strongest countries are the UK (9.8%), Canada (5.9%) and Germany (5%). Switzerland sits at rank 22 with about 0.6% of all traffic.
The TMQ-related communities are growing: Our Facebook group has over 9000 members now, the subreddit has almost 1000 subscribers and our Discord (where I’m by far the most active) is up to about 1300 members. The growth is always lovely and promising, but the management effort that comes with it can be daunting and I could not do it without relying on my hugely appreciated moderator team. ❤
Age and Gender Demographics of The Mane Quest users
Top 10 Articles in 2022, by page views
Best Horse Games 2022 (29K)
Elden Ring Review (8.2K)
Indie Horse Games (6.2K)
Roblox Horse Games (5.5K)
Windstorm 2 Review (5.2K)
8 Common Horse Mistakes (4.8K)
Horse Tales Announcement (4.4K)
Horse Club Adventures Review (4.4K)
Top 10 Articles of all time, by page views
Best Horse Games 2019 (134K)
Best Horse Games 2022 (82K)
Dressage in Red Dead Redemption 2 (48K)
Very Far Away Horse (32K)
Wildshade Announcement (18K)
8 Common Horse Mistakes (16K)
Top 10 Search Keywords in 2022
The mane quest (3.1K clicks, 4.2K impressions)
Very far away horse (1.6K clicks, 8K impressions)
Horse games (1.4K clicks, 131K impressions)
Horse games pc (1.4K clicks, 14K impressions)
Mane quest (1K clicks, 1.4K impressions)
Horse life simulator (860 clicks, 8.7K impressions)
Alicia online (830 clicks, 95K impressions)
Best horse games (680 clicks, 11.5K impressions)
Horse isle 3 (680 clicks, 26K impressions)
Manequest (500 clicks, 1.2K impressions)
Top 10 Referral Traffic Sources 2022
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
Youtube
Instagram
Wasted
Yandex
Polygon
Steam Community
Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch
Work-wise, my year was dominated by one horse game in particular: Horse Tales – Emerald Valley Ranch, which I saw from alpha to release stage over the course of this past year as its Creative Producer at Aesir Interactive. The project contained lots of “firsts” for me as a game creator: It’s the biggest project I’ve worked on in my career – up to 20 people worked on it during parts of its development – and the first time I’ve been directly involved in a game launched on Steam and Consoles, after primarily making and producing web-based games for AirConsole before this. This was only possible thanks to the immense wealth of knowledge and experience already established among the Aesir team, and it’s been wonderful to work alongside so many talented new colleagues.
The game’s release in November came with more technical problems and harsher feedback than we had hoped for, but also with a lot excitement and positivity from a good portion of players.
It’s still too early for me to take a proper step back and share any sort of retrospective insights – but I can tell you that lessons are being drawn from the game’s development and reception internally.
There will be at least one more update to the game in the new year – see details for that here. After that I hope to revisit the project on TMQ for further insight into its development and limitations, at some point in the future, because I won’t write a regular “review” for this game of course. The irony of knowing so much about all the decisions that went into making a horse game what it is, but not being able to talk about it on The Mane Quest in detail is not lost on me.
I’m proud of lots of things about the game, and I’m excited to be on board from the start for the next steps of Aesir Interactive’s horse game journey.
Other Highlights
My article on the quasi-horse in Elden Ring was well received and widely shared.
I had an absolutely lovely talk with Polygon’s Simone de Rochefort about why and how games keep getting horses wrong. The resulting video was viewed over 330K times!
I got to write a “Best horse games” listicle for Wasted, a German games magazine. The content wasn’t new to my regular readers, but it’s always lovely to actually get paid for my horse game opinions.
My Tweet about Horse Tales went viral (Over 700K views and 46K Likes!), and a follow up thread about where I got to where I am now got quite some attention as well!
The Mary Sue, a geek feminist website that I used to read religiously a few years ago, reported on me and my work not once, but twice! In glowing tones! My chat with writer Madeline Carpou was absolutely lovely, find the resulting article right here.
We saw the launch of Wyverns and Waypoints - a website dedicated to the analysis of Dragons in video games. Find my interview with its creator here.
Shifting Perspectives
When I started The Mane Quest four years ago (four years!!!!), it was a weird little hobby, but one that gave me so much joy that I put a ton of energy and free time into it.
A lot of my Sunday relaxing time is spent on trail rides with Waleska, the red warmblood mare at my new barn.
Nowadays, horse games are my actual job. On the one hand, this is incredibly exciting – some of the discussions and potential collaboration opportunities that I’ve had in this past year made me positively giddy with glee. I remain thoroughly optimistic for the future of this genre, knowing that my voice and my work are getting heard and seen in ever wider circles of the industry.
At the same time, horse games being work now means I often need more of a break from the subject matter in my free time, which results in the aforementioned decrease in productivity for TMQ-content. Dozens of article ideas and drafts, developer contacts to follow up on and games to play and review sit around somewhere on my computer, but I often have to spend my weekends catching up on some much needed relaxing instead.
Fittingly, there is an impressive number of horse statues around the Aesir office in Munich.
In addition, the house I inherited from my father has once again eaten up significant amounts of what would otherwise be “TMQ-time” this year. With some major renovations now concluded, I sincerely hope things will calm down a bit more, but old houses have a way of keeping people busy.
My professional involvement in some of the games I write about also means finding a new balance for how I use my platform: I’m stoked that I’m actually working in this niche of the industry, but being so closely involved of course means that I can’t be the neutral observer or reviewer that I might otherwise be. I try to be as transparent as possible about professional involvement at every opportunity, but some of the reactions to Horse Tales also motivate me to put even more care into how exactly I treat current and future projects that I’m working on myself.
Because I definitely want to keep using my platform to promote what I work on, now that I am in a position where I can actively combine my experience as a creator with the community and reach I’ve built these past four years.
It’s a delicate balance, but one I’m very motivated to find.
Looking Forward
I wrote in last year’s retrospective that 2021 was the most stressful year of my life. Honestly, 2022 did not fall too far behind. My job, my house and my horse riding opportunities keep offering me new challenges at every turn. But slowly, all the learning and growing these past two years have forced me to do are starting to pay off: I face 2023 feeling more secure in all of these roles, and more confident that I can handle whatever my life and my career throw at me next.
There are ever new horse games to review, developers to chat with, upcoming projects to get excited about and industry trends to analyze, after all.
Here’s to starting year number 5 of this wild ride. Thank you all for being here with me. 🥂