Starshine in Star Stable
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Star Stable succeeds with online horse game by ignoring good advice

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Star Stable Entertainment broke a lot of rules when it launched in 2012. 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.

“People advised us not to do it,” said Fredric Gunnarson, the chief executive of Star Stable Entertainment, in an interview with GamesBeat. “We did it anyway.”

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.