“Find a balance between listening to others and following your own vision. You need to recognize that as a founder, you ‘don’t know, what you don’t know’ so it’s important at times to listen to others and take advice when you need it.” – Loren Roosendaal

Founder@ Interview

With Loren Roosendaal

“Find a balance between listening to others and following your own vision. You need to recognize that as a founder, you ‘don’t know, what you don’t know’ so it’s important at times to listen to others and take advice when you need it. ” – Loren Roosendaal

Today we feature Loren Roosendaal, the founder at Bright Star Studios. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.

Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?

My name is Loren Roosendaal and I am the Co-Founder/Executive Producer, Bright Star Studios. In addition to co-founding Bright Star Studios, I am also the founder and chairman of PlanetQuest and Knowingo.

A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?

I began developing video games at the age of 11 and I quickly figured out I enjoyed that more than playing them. From a young age, I would always spend my time gaming. This meant I got to dive in and really experience the industry from a very young age. That passion led me to create a game project that was played by some 3 million people before I left high school. Soon the game I created was being played regularly by 3+ million people.

At age 20, I started my first Silicon Valley company, a gaming studio that, within 6 months, went from 3 to 45 people. Then, 13 years and 10+ companies (did I mention I have a hard time not finding anything new for a year?) down the road came Bright Star Studios where we are developing Ember Sword. Four years ago, Ember Sword was initially a seed of a thought among a group of developers who believed that there is still a lot more left to do in the MMORPG genre. That seed sprouted roots which eventually became the foundation of the first idea of giving back to the communities which make MMO’s hugely exciting and popular. It’s been an incredible journey so far.

Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?

Bright Star Studios is the developer of the MMORPG Ember Sword, an international independent video games development studio working on next generation MMO experiences. Bolstering with a passionate team of Award-Winning Venture Founders, former Pro-Players, World Champions, Game Industry Veterans and MMO fanatics, the innovators are carving a new path forward for MMORPGs across PC, Browser, and Mobile through a modern rewrite of the games industry business models in favor of the user, exciting competitive gameplay, and instant playability.

What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?

Ember Sword’s community land sale stands out as an Aha! Moment for me. You have to realize that for many games that have blockchain based sales – everyone just rushes in grab, grab, grab, grab, grab – and all the inventory is gone. Not to mention bots who can buy faster than humans. This doesn’t leave a lot of room for passionate gamers and guilds to own a piece of the community. I wanted to do something that was totally different than what other developers had done. We asked people to write motivational letters to share why they want this piece of land, and what they are going to do with it.

This ‘weeds out’ anyone that may be buying for the wrong reasons. We particularly thought it was really important to bring the right kind of owners on board for long term value. After a short amount of time, almost 35,000 people submitted applications to purchase 6,000 virtual plots of land. Overall, our community pledged more than $203 million to purchase virtual plots of land in the online world. For me this was a massive moment in my career and a very proud moment for us as the founders of Ember Sword.

Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?

Start everything you do with purpose. You need to have purpose behind everything you do, personally and professionally. If you don’t you could have 1,000 amazing ideas but will never execute one to its full potential because purpose is key to making it through the journey and keeping the course.

Learn what you do best and then make sure you’re doing that 120% of the time where possible. I’ve been a parallel entrepreneur for a long time. I knew the day I set foot in my first job (technically an internship I had to do as part of my education) that I was never going to be happy unless I was following my own vision.

If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

Be prepared to find the balance between vision and “What can be done right now.” As entrepreneurs, we tend to come up with “perfect solutions” and want to act on them because we have that mindset. But it is important to be able to separate future vision from what the market needs and is ready for today and in the near future. If not, your product, however great, won’t be used in the end.



We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?

Bright Star has team members all over the world and wouldn’t be able to run without collaboration tools such as Confluence and Jira. Additionally we lean on cloud infrastructure providers to allow us to rapidly deploy, test and scale our server infrastructure which is vital for an MMORPG, as well as providers of blockchain technology such as ImmutableX, that power the true ownership of land and collectibles in our game.

What do you know now that you wished you had known before?

Learn what you do best and then make sure you’re doing that 120% of the time where possible. I’ve been a parallel entrepreneur for a long time. I knew the day I set foot in my first job (technically an internship I had to do as part of my education) that I was never going to be happy unless I was following my own vision.



What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?

When almost 35,000 gamers collectively pledged more than $203 million to purchase virtual plots of land in the game.

What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?

I love building things and solving problems. You can go a long way towards changing the world through what you’re doing. So, with what I’m currently involved in, the blockchain space, particularly blockchain gaming, we can turn the ancient publisher model upside down, and actually share value with the people that are generating the value aka, the most prolific community members of all these games. The goal is simple: live in a world where there’s very few companies left that don’t share some portion of the value that they’re generating, creating entertainment, with the community, that’s co-creating that entertainment with them.

To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?

Find a balance between listening to others and following your own vision. You need to recognize that as a founder, you ‘don’t know, what you don’t know’ so it’s important at times to listen to others and take advice when you need it. I see a lot of early founders that are over-confident and listen to no one -believing they have all the wisdom. In the end this doesn’t end well for them. On the other end of the spectrum – I see others that are very much more comparatively timid, and listening so much to everyone around them, that they may end up listening to people that they never should have listened to.

As a founder, it’s valuable to figure out on which end of the spectrum you are, and find the balance between recognizing valuable advice and staying true to your vision. Also – be open to new opportunities. The MMORPG ecosystem is not a huge one and yet as founders, we managed to find each other and recognize the opportunity to do something great. So, the lesson there is that opportunity is waiting for you if you put yourself out there and are expecting it and looking for it, and once you find it, ready to get to work do something about it.

“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Bright Star Studios”

To learn more about Bright Star Studios Visit https://brightstar.studio/

Find on social media @

https://twitter.com/lorenroosendaal

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenroosendaal

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