Talking about Gender and Gaming is always a bit of a Pandora’s box. People have very strong opinions on how we should talk about sexism and gender in video games and characters, and unfortunately sometimes the loudest of those opinions is just “don’t”.

On the other hand, there has been a significant amount of progress in recent years. That the female characters in our games should be more than damsels in distress or flawlessly sexy action babes is becoming more and more common knowledge in the video game industry, and games of various genres are starting to make an effort in terms of gender diversity.

We have also started accepting that discrepancies in player demographics are often due to how games are made and marketed, and the notion that women just don’t play games as much is fortunately on its way out the door, slow as that process may be.

What remains – and is rarely discussed as far as I can tell – is an imbalance between how our industry tackles subject matters and activities that have a gendered connotation. And I believe this imbalance is a significant factor in the utter scarcity of well-made games about horses.