The Mane Quest at Devcom and Gamescom: I'm giving a talk about Horse Games!
Official talk description:
Horse Games are a niche, but they’re a lot more successful than you might be aware of: There are hundreds of games dedicated to riding, training, caring for and breeding horses, the most popular horse riding MMO has 500k Monthly Active Users and motivated players use modding tools to shape Minecraft, Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Sims to their equestrian needs. Despite these key successes, the content-hungry audience of horse-loving gamers remains often ignored by the games industry at large: Traditional publishers make low budget horse games aimed solely at children, the sports game space seems unaware that equestrians might be an audience and the cozy game trend is only slowly getting into the saddle. Take a ride through horse game history and learn how misconceptions and mismanagement have repeatedly kept publishers and developers from engaging, reaching and satisfying an eager audience. Get to know the small handful of projects that are doing things right in this genre and what we can learn from them when it comes to targeting passionate niche audiences.
If you’re attending Devcom, make sure to keep an eye on the official schedule as it updates, but according to the current plans, my talk should take place at at 1pm on Tuesday, August 20th. You can find my session on the official website by heading to the Speaker section and searching for my name.
All Devcom sessions are streamed for remote audiences, so if you want to tune in from afar, consider getting a digital pass here in the ticket shop. I would love to make the recording available publicly at some point, but that depends on the organizers and will take a few months at least in any case.
I am incredibly excited to bring my horse game knowledge to a slightly wider audience of game developers, and to hopefully connect with more creators, publishers, investors etc. who might want to play an active part in helping this genre reach its true potential.
If you’re an industry professional planning to attend Devcom and/or Gamescom, please do feel free to reach out to alice@themanequest.com if you’d like to meet up and chat about anything equine!