The origin of VirtualPopstar arose from the fascination of one of the founders. She had a fondness with on-line Fashion social sites such as goSupermodel/Stardoll from a young age, and from this we developed our own.We created a new franchise, from incorporating ideas from a mixed variety of sites that held the same target audience (teenagers) and common site interest. As VirtualPopstar is a new and growing organisation, valuing the opinions and ideas given to us by our older members of the community. We add new and exciting features that our users enjoy and keep developing new ideas to keep the target audience interested.
Virtual Popstar was founded in 2012 by Kaj and Lianne de Vries in the Netherlands. For a long time Kaj, now 26 years old had wanted to start his own game but didn’t have a clue of a good topic. He liked playing online Mafia games but since there were already too many out there he put the idea aside for years. Then 7 years later when he was 22 years old, he met Lianne, the love of his live. After a few weeks dating, he noticed she has been playing a game called GoSupermodel a lot. It was clear she liked the social environment the game had to offer. He realized again having his own game would be great.
Later on that night, while watching the TV program Idols. The idea of Virtual Popstar popped into his head. Why don’t we create a community game that’s all about music and becoming a popstar? Everyone would enjoy living like a popstar! It’s a hot topic with all the different television programs about becoming a popstar, but almost nobody can sing but the good part is, that doesn’t matter in a community game.
After the launch of the Dutch version in 2012, they improved the game a lot by listening to the players. As a group, they made the whole concept even better and added many extra features. They also learned off other games and ask themselves: what are they doing right and what can we learn from our competition. Since the game is run only by Lianne, Kaj, and a lot of volunteers that work from home like the moderators, admins, designers, etc, they don’t need a big office building or a lot of advertisement on the site or an expensive membership.
Kaj: We’ve created this game because we enjoy playing games. So far, we have invested all of our savings to make this game possible. It is our goal to make Virtual Popstar the biggest and happiest only community game in the world. Bring people together and really make a difference! And I hope everyone that reads this wants to be a part of this new upcoming community and help to promote the game because we didn’t make the game for ourselves, we made it for you!