Breakout Bandits:
We are Wouter and Esther. Looking back at the paths we have taken over the past twenty years, Breakout Bandits feels like a natural meeting point.
Creating games. Entrepreneurship. Guiding young people. Coaching people. Developing products that make customers happy. Getting stuck ourselves and finding our way back up.
All those experiences now come together in Breakout Bandits.
The foundation was laid in
Wouter has been creating games for as long as he can remember. As a teenager, he organised large game weekends for his youth group. Later, these became full bachelor weekends in which friends travelled through Europe together, completing all kinds of challenges and adventures along the way.
His working life began somewhere completely different. After studying Computer Science and Information Science, he worked for a large corporate organisation for around twenty years, first in software development and later in online marketing. There he learned a great deal about technology, marketing and product development and worked with methods including Scrum and Design Thinking.
Alongside corporate life, a second passion emerged: youth work. Wouter trained as a youth worker and combined his job with youth work for many years. Together with young people, he organised large national games and events. And that is where something happened that would later become important to Breakout Bandits.
Some of the young volunteers had been through difficult periods or were struggling themselves. Yet during a project they were not standing on the sidelines. They helped organise it, were given responsibilities and were needed to create something good together.
Wouter saw what that could do for young people. He learned that you sometimes see completely different sides of someone when you do not start by asking what is going wrong, but by making something together. He learned to recognise hidden talents, give responsibility, build a group and give young people a genuine role within a project.
Much of what we do at Breakout Bandits today has its roots there.
started early
Esther grew up in an entrepreneurial family, so entrepreneurship was part of her life from an early age. She studied Food Technology at a university of applied sciences and then worked for several large food companies.
During her student years, she discovered a passion for cheesemaking. Years later, after several jobs had not given her what she was looking for, she decided to build her own business.
She started with cheesemaking workshops and developed these into professional training and consultancy for companies. Along the way, she discovered how important it is to truly listen to customers. That customer focus is now deeply embedded in Breakout Bandits too. We want to create social impact, but the games we sell simply have to be good. Customers should be enthusiastic and players should have a great experience.
Even as a student, Esther enjoyed guiding students and young adults. After graduating, she completed a year-long leadership programme in which coaching was an important element. Later, together with Wouter, this once again became part of our youth work.
And then life took an
We both know what it feels like when life takes a different direction from the one you had imagined. Esther went through burnout, illness, job loss and depression. There were periods when she could move forward relatively quickly after a setback, but also periods when that simply was not possible and she spent months largely unable to function at home.
Wouter supported her throughout. At the same time, we had a young family and everyday life continued. The combination of caring, responsibility and trying to keep everything going eventually led to exhaustion and stress for him as well.
We know how frustrating it can be when your mind wants to move forward, but your body or circumstances will not cooperate and how expectations that once felt normal can suddenly become overwhelming. We also know that recovery does not always mean everything returns to exactly how it was before. Our work is informed not only by professional experience, but by lived experience too.
Three young people
Breakout Bandits started very small in 2022. We developed the team-building games ourselves, handled marketing and sales and supported the players. Slowly the company grew and more and more people played our games.
At the beginning of 2024, something unexpected happened. Within a few weeks, three young people came to us. Their stories were different, but their question was roughly the same: things are not going so well for me right now; could I perhaps just help out a little?
Around the same time, a suitable space became available. We decided to rent it and told the young people they were welcome. Looking back, that was an important moment. Suddenly, many different parts of our lives came together.
The games Wouter had always created. His twenty years of experience in IT, marketing and product development. The youth work where we had seen what working with young people on a real project can do. Esther’s experience as an entrepreneur, her strong customer focus and her experience with coaching. And our own experience of periods when life turns out completely differently from what you expected.
That is where the Breakout Bandits we continue to develop today began to take shape.
And that is how Breakout Bandits
Looking back, many parts of our lives came together at that moment. Wouter’s experience creating games, technology and product development, but especially his years in youth work. Esther’s entrepreneurship, her strong customer focus and her experience coaching and guiding students and young people. And alongside that, our own experiences of periods when life turned out very differently from what we had imagined.
We simply started building Breakout Bandits: developing and selling games, giving young people a meaningful role within our company and, above all, learning along the way what did and did not work. Our current social programmes grew from those experiences, one step at a time.
A few years on, Breakout Bandits has grown into a social enterprise that brings together the things that give us energy: entrepreneurship, creating games, bringing people together and giving young people and young adults the opportunity to reconnect, contribute and move forward.
