Once you get past Umamusume’s odd premise – and get so into it that you start buying high-grade $40 grass for a real horse – it’s hard not to love the anime girl horse game that’s become a sensation on Twitch and Steam. But the video game industry’s premiere horse game consultant, Alice Ruppert, finds herself more bemused than amused.
Ruppert has spent years of her career trying to get gaming companies to take horses seriously and running The Mane Quest, a site dedicated to video game horses. The fact is, many games mess up horses to an almost comedic degree – whether we’re talking their legs or their testicles – and the ones that focus on equine excursions first and foremost don’t tend to boast the biggest budgets or best development pedigrees. This typically relegates them to a niche. But now, finally, a horse game for the masses has appeared. Umamusume is already, per Ruppert’s own estimate, "by far the most well-known and well-reviewed game focused on equestrian sports.” Problem is, it’s only sort of a horse game.
"I have supremely mixed feelings,” Ruppert, who has said that Umamusume’s popularity relative to more traditional horse games is going to turn her into The Joker, told Aftermath. “It's not that I don't think this should exist, and I don't think it's bad that people are having fun with a silly sports game that features girls as horses. I do very much see the harmless fun in it. … [But] it's not about horses, which is usually what my criteria for something being a horse game is. But it is very much within that world of horse racing. It is very much inspired by real horse racing."
I do very much see the harmless fun in it. … [But] it's not about horses, which is usually what my criteria for something being a horse game is.
Umamusume’s determined not-quite-centaurs are all based on real racehorses, a genuinely interesting twist that’s resulted in fans forming parasocial relationships with the handful that are still alive, because nobody can just be normal about anything anymore. On that front, Ruppert appreciates the game’s attention to detail.
"Some of the characters have different colored shoes or socks depending on the leg marking of the horse she represents,” Ruppert said. “And many of them match the hair color to mane color and stuff like that. That's cute. That's attention to detail that I don't see in the horse games that I usually review."
But that gets to the heart of Ruppert’s conflicted feelings about Umamusume: “I am convinced that a good horse racing game about actual horses could do just as well if it was implemented just as well. I spent years trying to chase after what other horse games do wrong. What do so many of them do so bad? How do they harm their own reach and potential?”
Ruppert sees potential in a few horse games of today and tomorrow, but Umamusume is in a league of its own.
“We're seeing more things now where people actually try and take a chance on the horse game audience, with stuff like Windstorm: Legend of Khiimori or Equinox: Homecoming,” said Ruppert. “Equinox: Homecoming doesn't have comparable numbers [to Umamusume] on Steam. I'm not saying it necessarily should, but there's a difference in the amount of polish and reach that [Umamusume] came out with. I so badly wish there were actual horse games like that."
But of course, there’s an easy argument against Ruppert’s impassioned pleas: Umamusume is first and foremost an anime girl gacha game and, secondarily, a horse game. One of these things, you would think, is always going to grab more eyeballs than the other. Ruppert, however, disagrees.
"I've seen the argument of 'Yeah, of course this is bigger than any horse games; it has anime girls in it. It's the roster of conventionally attractive, nice, pretty ladies that you get,’” said Ruppert. “But that's missing big parts of the equation for me. On one hand, we simply don't know how many people would play a good horse game if it were made with comparable production value, because nobody's done it."
We simply don't know how many people would play a good horse game if it were made with comparable production value, because nobody's done it.
She even believes streamers might latch onto a well-made horse game in a similarly ironic way, if only because people have spent decades joking about Barbie Horse Adventures and games of the like.
“I've definitely seen some amount of similar reactions to games actually about horses, where people are like 'Let's try this for shits and giggles,' and then it ends up being actually fun,” she said. “That kind of explosion could technically happen to a horse game as well. I've heard enough people make jokes about horse games that lots of streamers would consider it super absurd. … It’s very hard to predict that, because you never know which trends will pick up steam, but I don’t consider it outside the realm of possibility.”
For now, though, Ruppert believes that most horse-focused games lack the necessary meat on their bones to gallop to the front of the pack. If nothing else, she says, they could stand to study Umamusume’s core gameplay loop – or assemble any sort of satisfying core loop at all. As with a great many things in this world, more money would go a long way toward solving the problem.
"Some of the games I review have budgets of $100,000-$200,000 [while] being multiplatform releases. That's nothing. That's no money at all,” she said. “It's not surprising that they don't have time for iterating, balancing, polishing, bug fixing, etc. My point is, these games could be more successful if publishers and investors would take a chance on them. But I also have to acknowledge that, currently, no investors and publishers are taking a chance on anything, so horse games aren't alone in this plight at the moment."
But thanks to Umamusume, interest in real horses – or at least, specific real horses – is on the rise. That, in Ruppert’s eyes, is something.
"People gain an interest in horse racing through Umamusume and then start looking into the topic in general, which is fun. Whatever exposes people to new interests and hobbies is fine. I would not dare to judge that," she said. “I do have a few people that joined my Discord this week like 'I checked out Umamusume, and that made me want to play actual horse games. Now I'm looking for them.' So that does happen, on a very small scale."
Whatever exposes people to new interests and hobbies is fine. I would not dare to judge that.
While Ruppert is not exactly hopeful that Umamusume will lead to a horse game renaissance, she hopes at least a small handful of people – hopefully some with money – will learn a lesson from its success.
"This proves that equestrianism and equestrian themes do not turn people off of games. Mechanics related to training, competition, and care in between – that works,” she said. “People underestimate how many people want to play horse games because they think horse girls aren't gamers, and they think anybody who is interested in horses is at the barn and not at their PC – without accepting that people can actually be interested in multiple things, and that not everybody who wants to spend time with horses can afford to do so in real life.”
“I really believe that it would work with actual horses; it would target different people, but you could make a game like this with the actual animal,” she added. “And I feel like anyone who immediately goes 'Of course anime girls are more popular’ is underestimating the power of this audience of people who like horses and want to see them done well in games."
