There are two reasons I post on this list called “8 Common Horse Mistakes I Want Game Developers to Stop Making.” Number one, is a good list. Number two comes from a horse-themed video game website called The search Mane.
But really, it’s a good list. Most people in the 21st century have nothing to do with horses and would not know the first one, so when we see and use one in a video game, we often think that “yes, this is a horse, it’s like a car but sometimes I can feed it ”. It turns out that this is also the case with many video game developers (the author aside, since they are actually a developer themselves) see them too, because games sure still make a lot of mistakes when it comes to representing our four-legged bigger friends.
However, people who know horses can see the past and realize, shit, these video game horses have some issues. Like legs that flex (or don’t flex) when they’re supposed to, or the horse’s mouth opens for no reason, because, unlike people, horses can’t breathe through they and therefore usually only keep them closed.
It’s also a problem: it turns out that horses look more like cats when it comes to washing and petting than, well, how we think horses are, and so relying on trust statistics is a bit broken. And perhaps most importantly:
… the only thing that’s as frustrating as a bad-tempered horse is a well-animated horse that I can’t look at shit. Let me rotate the camera, please.
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You can read the full list here, that if you’re not a horse, you probably should. We’re all so determined to make sure people recreate themselves perfectly in our video games that it can’t hurt to read how to ensure that horses recreate themselves perfectly as well. Or if it’s not perfect, at least better.