Meet Star Stable, a horse game for girls 8 to 17

May 25, 2020 7:27 AM

According to a 2015 profile in Venture Beat, Star Stable Entertainment broke a lot of rules when it launched (in 2011, according to various sources other than Venture Beat). "It created an online horse game, Star Stable, for girls and young women. It charged a subscription fee and built its own game engine. And it stayed online rather than diving into mobile with a million other competitors."

"In the massively multiplayer online game, the story takes place on a mystical island called Jorvik. Players can ride around on horses in a pretty, 3D environment. There’s a supernatural force and an evil corporation trying to control an island. You fight against the evil forces and go on an adventure. You go on quests that are continually updated. To date, the game has had more than 3,000 updates. And if you try to ride through all 17 levels, it can take 150 hours. The story is updated with new plot elements every Wednesday. At level five, a subscription is required."

Targeting girls ages 8 to 17 is tough, according to Venture Beat, because the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act places a lot of restrictions on communication. But Stockholm-based Star Stable Entertainment uses a third-party social monitoring system to automatically moderate and monitor all chat. That plus regular updates seems to be working. In 2017, the game hit 10 million registered users. In 2019, the company launched a music label and began releasing original, in-game songs on music services. A series of books are due out later this year, along with an animated children's series.

Today the game is available for PC users in more than 180 countries in 14 different languages. Because of the pandemic, average daily gameplay has jumped by 93% since the middle of March and the company counts a total of 1.4 million monthly active players, which is the sum of online users and users of its two related mobile games. (Stats based on Swedish article in Dagens Industry.)

This is a successful company with a successful product. So why is it relatively unknown?

posted by Bella Donna (23 comments total)

This is a successful company with a successful product. So why is it relatively unknown?

Patriarchy is probably the answer. And that goes hand in hand with not taking the interests of young girls and women seriously. I've never heard of this game and that makes me feel a bit bad.

I read/post from a lot of gaming journalism on a regular basis and even the more progressive sites returned 0 results when searching at Kotaku, Polygon, & Vice. Not one of these gaming sites has bothered to write up an article or review for this game. It's super fucked up.

Thanks for sharing this Bella Donna. What an awesome post!!
posted by Fizz at 7:46 AM on May 25, 2020 [17 favorites]

Thanks, Fizz! I am not a gamer but I am in Stockholm. I check out the job opportunities for native-English writers fairly often. This company has been hiring new people or at least looking for new people for months. So I thought I should do some research, and I was shocked that this company has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. There was something in Forbes a long time ago and Venture Beat covers it periodically but nobody else so much.

It makes me sad, too. I’m not a gamer but I have a younger sister who is a gamer and a granddaughter who will probably become a gamer courtesy of her dad and big brother. I’ve got nothing against, say, Minecraft (the Nazi-leanings of the guy who created it is a different matter). I would just like to think that maybe there are additional options out there. The company used to be close to 60% female although it was founded by two men. Now it’s closer to 50-50 but that still sounds like a big improvement compared to most game and tech companies. Go Star Stable! Let us hope it is not the toxic hellhole of many other workplaces.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:56 AM on May 25, 2020 [8 favorites]

This is a successful company with a successful product. So why is it relatively unknown?

This isn’t even the first post about SSO on MetaFilter.

It has 1 million MAU, it’s not unknown. Almost every girl in my daughter’s 3rd grade class has definitely heard of it, and 7 or so of them play.

Also, if I said “which studios make the top 3-5 driving simulators?”, you (in the general sense) wouldn’t know those either.
posted by sideshow at 8:42 AM on May 25, 2020 [5 favorites]

There was a nice post about The Mane Event earlier this year- a blog about horses in gaming. Here is the Star Stable Online review.
posted by zamboni at 8:43 AM on May 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

I hadn’t heard of Star Stable before today, but my 9yo just created an account and she is thrilled so far. I’m glad you posted this!
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:50 AM on May 25, 2020 [12 favorites]

They aren't even first to break the rules. Horse Isle was released in 2007 - my daughter played obsessively back in the 2008-2009 timeframe. IIRC, Horse Isle was developed by an American couple that lived in RV traveling the country with their young kids while developing the game.

I just checked and Horse Isle seems to still be going strong.
posted by COD at 8:53 AM on May 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

I've definitely heard of it but I live with a seven-year-old girl. Tbh it's really not a bad time to be a little girl who games. Mine isn't playing Star Stable but Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Pokemon Let's Go have been big hits around here. And those are all games that found a huge mass audience among adults too.

They are really limiting their audience by not having a Chromebook port though! Who's out there getting a capital-C Computer for their kid these days?
posted by potrzebie at 8:57 AM on May 25, 2020 [3 favorites]

Thanks, sideshow. I searched via MF itself and Google to see if there had been a FPP about this but nothing came up. Cool to hear about Horse Isle, COD.
posted by Bella Donna at 8:57 AM on May 25, 2020

Rock Paper Shotgun covers Star Stable in 2013.
posted by dgeiser13 at 10:53 AM on May 25, 2020 [4 favorites]

It only really got mainstream media coverage here in Sweden when it was found that a pedophile was grooming young girls on it.
posted by groda at 11:13 AM on May 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

USA guy here who reads quite a bit about video games, and I have never heard of this either. It seems like a really good concept for a kid's/young person's game. Having not just your own avatar, but a "pet" or mount-horse as well is a cool idea that really opens up customization options.

I've never even thought about the wide possibility of MMOs for kids. I guess the Internet-creep factor makes it difficult to have games for children like this, otherwise there'd be more of them. Our world sucks in so many ways.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:24 AM on May 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

"So why is it relatively unknown?"

I read that and thought one word: girls.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:43 PM on May 25, 2020 [4 favorites]

My guess is that being relatively unknown has helped keep it safe from low-quality imitators, but that's only a guess. What do you think?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:32 PM on May 25, 2020

The state of my Steam library in the age of COVID:
A horse game for teenage girls, huh? That sounds like the most...how much does it cost to play?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 5:59 PM on May 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

My horse was randomly named Gigafrost and I love him
posted by The otter lady at 6:02 PM on May 25, 2020 [3 favorites]

Its probably not in the gaming media becuase the company doesn't push it. All those articles and reviews are becuase of a request or at least a result of a media campaign/ press release / freebies with the goal of the company to boost sales. This game is already hugely popular and would gain nothing from reviews on gamer blogs where no little girls hang out anyway. And I'm sure the parents prefer it is low key, with less creepy adult attention. Look at how creepy My Little Pony got. No thanks.

The first horse game I remember seeing was in the mid 90s btw. They've always been popular
posted by fshgrl at 9:52 PM on May 25, 2020 [9 favorites]

I'm a little fascinated by the sheer gender disparity. 98% female audience is almost incomprehensible to me. I have a hard time thinking of things that aren't deliberately exclusive that produce that kind of split other than male subscribers to audiophile magazine back in the 90s. Come to think of it though, as a kid I knew way more girls into the idea of horses than I did boys.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:09 AM on May 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

98% female audience is almost incomprehensible to me.

There are tons of online and real life audiences like this, and I'm not talking stereotypically feminine stuff, all kinds of stuff: art, science, politics, comedy, sports. I belong to several online groups that are 90% female audiences but never even mention gender at all. They aren't hidden but most things that are 90%+ female are very happy to stay out of the media to avoid male harassment. Some of these groups are massive, with tens of thousands of active members but like you, most men just never realize they exist.
posted by fshgrl at 2:01 PM on May 26, 2020 [6 favorites]

Partner and I started playing yesterday because they said, and I quote, "I cannot express how badly I want Warframe to be a horse sim," and I responded, "Oh, well, I just saw this Metafilter post..." Apparently there's a promotion for 3 free days of the subscription (without requiring you to put in a credit card or anything) so you can go past level 5 for free right now. Honestly it's quite well done. I would have adored this as a teenager. My only complaint is the controls are just a tad too clunky for me, making otherwise interesting fetch quests a little too tedious, but on the whole it's a lot of fun. My partner woke up this morning and said, "I want to play the pony game."

Also, I saw a group of players standing around with fancy black horses with matching bows and tophats and felt like I was passing by the Cool Girls in school. And I kept seeing people compliment each others horses. And I was Googling to figure something out and found out that roleplay/acting out stories is really popular there? It was so wholesome.
posted by brook horse at 7:55 AM on May 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

As a horse person who spends an inordinate amount of time just riding horses around in Breath of the Wild, I can't believe I've never heard of this game.
posted by OolooKitty at 4:12 PM on May 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

This is a successful company with a successful product. So why is it relatively unknown?

In addition to the aforementioned gender demographics and lack of traditional promotion, the age range of the playerbase probably has something to do with it. A lot of traditional games media is focused on things for males in their older teens and 20's, specifically. I was shocked to find out recently that Roblox has over 140 million active users, which dwarfs things like World of Warcraft, yet I see far more coverage of the latter. I assume that's mostly because the primary demographic of Roblox is around 9-15.

Similarly, for different demographic reasons, the most popular online game in the world is the PC shooter CrossFire, and the third-most is the mobile game Honor of Kings, both of which have over 200 million active users, and neither of which I've even seen mentioned in the English-speaking games press, because they're mostly big in China.
posted by Wandering Idiot at 1:11 AM on May 28, 2020 [3 favorites]

They’re running two promotions now: first, three free days of the subscription for all new accounts, and also 2 weeks of the subscription for $1. Partner has been playing constantly the past three days. You can bet they slammed that $1 on the counter.
posted by brook horse at 7:36 PM on May 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Update: Partner has been playing constantly the past two weeks. There's a sale for 30% off lifetime Star Rider ($52 instead of $75) and they're jumping on it. Thanks so much for posting this, Bella Donna, it's brought them much joy.
posted by brook horse at 3:32 PM on June 12, 2020