on with the Canadian Cancer Society as
the regional manager of Greater Vancou-
ver and the coastal region. Ultimately,
though, Bailey decided the work wasn't
quite in line with what she wanted to do. "I
learned that I wasn't really a social worker,
but I am a leader," she says. Around that
time, she and Stumborg divorced, and
Bailey realized that she wanted to pursue
entrepreneurship.
"The sane thing to do would have
been to invest in a townhouse and take
the safe route," she says. "But for me, [the
divorce] was more of a driver. I wanted
to provide well for my children. It gave
me a lot of fire in my belly. And you need
it—you have to have that driver, whatever
it is. For me, it was not having to say no
to my kids when they wanted to do ski
lessons or ride horses."
It was around the mid-2000s when
Bailey undertook an evaluation of where
people were making money at the time.
She didn't have to look far—one of
her main hobbies, video games,
was blowing up. At the time,
handheld devices like the Nintendo DS
and PlayStation Portable were coming out.
"You could build less-expensive games
that were high quality and really engag-
ing on smaller platforms," she says. Bailey
was rowing competitively at the time, and
one of her crewmates introduced her to a
group of Electronic Arts employees—Ryan
Bedard, Russell Rice, Brian Tolin, Steve
Tolin and Phil Weeks—who were looking
for a businessperson to start a new video
game company with.
Episode III:
The Phone Wars
"They hired a guy who wasn't what they
were looking for—they were unsure if they
trusted him," says Bailey. "Whereas I was
the nice woman from the Cancer Society.
So they took a chance on me."
Deep Fried Entertainment was estab-
lished in 2005 and shipped a handful of
titles, including MLB Superstars, Major
League Baseball 2K9: Fantasy All-Stars and
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