Star Stable November Blog - Johan's Story & Silverglade

My Story

By Johan Sjöberg (CEO)

Hello, dear StarFam!

My name is Johan Sjöberg, co-founder and CEO at Star Stable Entertainment. This is my story.

I’ve always been passionate about games. In fact, I call myself a certified game idiot, since I’ve never really done anything else. Except trying to become a rock star. Didn’t quite work out as I planned.

I decided I wanted to make games when I was 10 years old. That was in 1984. It feels like a long time ago, in a galaxy far away. But it also feels like yesterday. 

My first game passion wasn’t video games. It was pen-and-paper RPGs. I’d spend endless hours with my friends experiencing outrageous adventures in fantasy kingdoms, post-apocalyptic wastelands, and horrifying alternative realities.     

Then I started to write. First for myself and my friends. Then for others. I was so excited about the ideas I came up with that I wanted to share them with the world. And luckily I found a home working for a company that did just that.  

Over the course of about ten years I designed rule systems and wrote game worlds, made up weird characters and told epic tales, and saw them come to life in the hands of players across the world as they dove into my creations in the same way I had done. I was living my dream. Little did I know where this journey would take me.

In the late 90’s I started my first game studio together with two friends I met when writing pen-and-paper roleplaying games. That journey lasted five years. Five very intense years, where I learned a lot about making games. Mostly by failing to make games. What began next was what would eventually lead to the start of Star Stable Entertainment, the company that I am today incredibly happy to call home.

It all began with a churn problem in a mail-order book club, which a group of companies was tasked with solving (one of those companies was a studio I co-founded called Pixel Tales). The solution presented was simple. Give the readers computer games for free, and they will stay in the book club!

We looked at the horse games in the market at the time and felt that games for girls and games about horses had a few things in common. They didn’t have great production values. They weren’t a lot of fun, often very down to earth. In fact, it seemed that they didn’t take their audience seriously.

So we thought about how to do something about that. Since we came from a background of magical adventures and epic stories and frankly knew very little about horses, we came up with the concept of Starshine Legacy, a story of four chosen girls, their horses, and their fight against corporate greed and an evil being from far away! 

The games were very well received by the players, so we got the opportunity to create more games in the same universe: Star Academy and the first Star Stable games. I wrote, designed, and project managed the production of all the Star Academy and Star Stable games. It was an absolute blast and I still have very fond memories of putting together the storylines, creating quirky characters (Herman’s brothers are still favorites), and learning more about horses than I had expected.

At this point we started to think about what was next for the world of Jorvik. The book club didn’t want to make more games and we were uncertain of where to go next. I got the opportunity to join an American video game agency, to help independent game development studios with their business development. Because just like athletes, writers, and movie stars, video game development studios have agents too. 

So I stepped out of my hands-on role at Pixel Tales, to focus on my new role, but stayed in the loop and kept helping with the running of the business.

The team at Pixel Tales was hard at work trying to think about new ways to work with the Star Stable, Star Academy, and Starshine Legacy universe, now that the book club wasn’t involved anymore. Our creative director at the time was playing a lot of MMOs and one day asked the question: “What if we turned Star Stable into an MMO?” 

And the idea for Star Stable Online was born.

Together with one of the investors behind the company that had led the process with the book club and one of his partners, we set up a new business—Star Stable Entertainment—to turn this idea into a reality. I joined the board to represent the development team. 

 At the same time as I was busy traveling around the world as an agent (my actual title was Vice President of Business Development), meeting with publishers in London, Paris, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, I still spent most of my time in Stockholm in the same office where the Pixel Tales team was busy building SSO. 

I watched the game come to life, made tiny contributions here and there, but mostly cheered them on from the sidelines and helped guide decisions from my position on the board!

In 2013 I took on a new challenge as I got the opportunity to join the strategy game developer and publisher Paradox Interactive, first as Executive Vice President and a bit later as Chief Product Officer, with responsibility for all games in active development. During my time at Paradox we shipped a lot of spectacular games, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV, Stellaris, Cities: Skylines, and Pillars of Eternity, to name a few. 

Almost five years later in late 2017 something happened that would set my life in a new direction. At a board meeting in Star Stable Entertainment it was announced that the current CEO would be leaving. Soon. We needed to find someone new. And fast.

Then I got the question. Would I consider taking over in the interim, just a few days a week, while we looked for a permanent CEO? I said I would. And in January 2018 I jumped into the saddle for what I thought would be a short part-time session as substitute CEO.

As I write this, almost seven years have passed, and I look back on some of the most eventful years of my professional career. It has been one wild, fun, and challenging ride so far! 

But that is the subject of another blog post! Thanks for reading this far …

All the best,

Johan

Silverglade Equestrian Center

By May Iren V. Lorentsen (3D Artist)

Hello all, - this is your humble May speaking to you from atop the lovely new manor we have. There is a great view from here, and under me I can see quite a few changes to the landscape! 

Tiny little me, and maybe soon you – looking out over the view!

So, with that said, please let me address what some of you might have heard through the grapevine already... (Get it?) 

The Silverglade Equestrian Center has finally gotten a facelift! This includes the baroness’ manor, the four different gardens, façade of the home stable, and the vineyard, of course! (And many other changes and additions we hope you will appreciate)

The Old vs The New - ‘’New-Look Vineyard!’

Imagine this: On April 8 years ago, another blogpost was written announcing the first facelift of the Vineyard, using this picture. The exact wording was: ‘’New-Look Vineyard!’’ 

It all feels like a dream now, but this was indeed how it looked... 

And my, oh my, how much love many of you have shown this place. A huge thank you.

Please remember that with bittersweet goodbyes also comes a new beginning! And know that even though things have changed, they are still—at their core—the same! And we have tried our best to stay true to the original content.

But still, it felt only fitting to mention this and do it justice, as we know many of you have poured hours, days, and weeks of love into this place.

To think it was last updated almost a decade ago, and now it is time for a new look again! Time really does fly when you are having fun, and we certainly did while working on this project. It is my honor and joy to show you and write this to you!

And with that: Here goes! Da-da!

Here is but a small snippet of the front of the manor, with some of the greenery out front! You can also see a bit of the home stable there! And look – it is finally matching with the manor! Hopefully, Sabine is impressed with the changes. Looks like she is stealing a glance there. 

General Vibe and feel

The original layout of the area could, at times, be a little confusing. I, myself, have on several occasions been the victim of dangerous falls trying to find the best shortcuts riding down to the riding hall. Not to mention finding the gardens and the horse trainer. I just must be as fast as possible!

But the result I end up with is often the opposite… This is a message I am sure many of you are very familiar with. Please tell me I am not the only one? 

But through arduous training I finally memorized the correct road, shortcut, and path of this area. But that isn’t to say it wasn’t a painful learning experience! Let us try and make it a little easier for those to come, yes? 

So, for this area facelift we decided to make things faster for you by also moving things around in the terrain! Hopefully to your convenience. There are now proper shortcuts and proper roads to take you wherever you fancy, hopefully without taking any more falls like I did above.

A couple of Highlights!

I will show you a little secret! – The top view of the Silverglade Equestrian Centre! 

Right now, we are birds, and we are soaring high above to take in how things are looking in the game right now. And if you have a keen eye (like birds often have), you can spot that the entire riding hall is now tilted! It's rotated a little bit to the side compared to how it was! And the factory building has moved further to the right and is rotated as well! This was to make space for a bigger, rectangular paddock. And below the big paddock you can now also do lunging (In the rounded one, next to the horse selling area). 

Now, if you get tired of riding around the front area of the manor, - why not follow the new paths that will take you to the riding arena? Or pass by the gardens!

Gardens

Bigger, better, stronger. Hopefully. In the original set up of the gardens they were quite small and could at times feel cramped or like they had been tucked away and could be hard to find. 

Sun

Directly behind the manor we can now find the garden dubbed the Sun Garden. (Feel free to scroll back to the highlights picture to see where it is)

Earlier this would be what you might remember as the pansy garden. A square enclosure with a small pond in the middle and a big tree to the side. This now features flowers in yellow and orange for a warmer feel. The little pond is under the gazebo.

Moon

Similarly, if you ride one level below, you will find the Moon Garden, with blues, pinks, and purples for a colder look. Earlier, this was known as the Tulip Garden, and it was quite small. It originally served as an entrance to the pansy garden and had primarily yellow and orange. 

Rose

This was a personal favorite of mine in the original setup, and the shape of the flowerbed was important to retain. So, I made sure that we had a design that still resembled a harp! I also created lots more color options for the roses, as opposed to just having red. And we now have two main installations of flowers instead of one!

Agnetha

The last, but certainly not least, is the Juniper Garden, also known as Agnetha’s Garden. It is still placed close to Bjorn and Agnetha’s house, which makes sense. But the Rose Garden has been moved to give both more space! So now we could make a bigger show out of the fountain! It seemed to be one of the focal points of the original garden, so I wanted to keep that. And I arranged the updated hedges to have different shapes and made a new rounded Juniper.

This blog post is now nearing its end. If you made it this far, I have a special treat for you. I have mainly worked on the gardens, but there are so many other lovely things the team has made! So here are a couple of last highlights I really wanted to show you from the team.

Before and After

The evolution of wine grapes! From small and dry to lush, green, and overgrown! Sneak a peek at the smallest picture, would you? The wine grapes have come a long way!

Some of you might remember this big fellow! Of course, he was given some love, too. The position of the big pipe has slightly changed, though. Can you find him?

Another personal favorite coming up. Building something new from scratch while still honoring the original is not an easy task. But luckily, we have someone on our team who is great at it. Please look at these updated Birch trees. And we don’t have just one updated model, but several varieties! Yay! There’s a cozy little place with water at the end of this path. Just so you know.

This is a cool one: We're giving the Baroness a fancy new ride! The updated car is a lighter, almost champagne color to fit her elegant vibe.

There are many more tidbits I could have shown you, but then I would sit atop the manor roof all day, and so would you while reading this. So, for now, I will kindly bid you adieu, and hope that I see you at the Equestrian Centre! My lovely Noriker is waiting for me downstairs anyway!

Have a lovely day!

May Iren V. Lorentsen