BCBusiness

34 BC BU S I N E S S .C A O C T O B E R 2 0 24 Full Auto 2: Battlelines. At its height, the company had close to 50 employees. "Deep Fried was doing some cool work, and Brenda was a community builder, an innovator, a business leader," says Lynda Brown-Ganzert, then the president of New Media BC and currently the founder and CEO of life sciences SaaS platform RxPx. The pair found friendship as two of the few women in Vancouver's male-dom- inated tech space. "She was just a really kind and interesting person," Brown-Gan- zert remembers. Some five years after helping launch the company, Bailey sold her shares to her partners. "We had a difference of opinion on the iPhone," she says. "2008 was a piv- otal year; many businesses went under. But we were well-positioned." Deep Fried had spent the money to develop its own game engine that could deliver on a number of platforms. "When the iPhone came out, there was an oppor- tunity for us to become a major developer for mobile," Bailey says. "The touch tool was something people were trying to fig- ure out. We'd solved it. I wanted to go in that direction. My partners were intent on staying with Nintendo and doubling down on the Wii. My business advice was to go to Apple, but I couldn't get my team to go with me. It was a good learning experience." If there's any emotion in Bailey's voice, it reflects disappointment that she couldn't convince her partners to come with her. There is no hint of bravado or bluster. "A very similar studio in Australia pivoted to iPhone and became one of the top develop- ers," she says plainly. "They're now valued at over a billion dollars." Her takeaway? "That I would never again be in a position in business where I don't have the decision-making power. I can't be a 40-percent partner again." Deep Fried Entertainment closed its doors shortly after Bailey left. Episode IV: A New Hope With a bit of money in her pocket, Bailey and fellow video game executive Kirsten Forbes co-founded Silicon Sisters Inter- active with the goal of making games for women and girls. "It was a passion play," she says. "When I was working in games, I became aware that there was an endemic problem that the people who built video games didn't believe that girls liked video games. And studios would fund games for girls at a much lower rate. That created lower-quality games for girls." She points to the Nanaimo arcades of her youth, when Centipede and Aster- oids were all the rage. "There were lots of young women and men playing those games. But [the industry] became focused on boys. It was a decision. In the begin- ning, both were involved." Silicon Sisters reached some 20 employ- ees at its height and published games like School 26, its sequel School 26: Summer of Secrets and Everlove: Rose. The studio also garnered widespread support from the tech industry and beyond. "Brenda identified the market," says Carina Kom, a veteran of the video game industry who once did contract work for Silicon Sisters and now runs Vancouver- based studio Simply Sweet Games, which was inspired by Bailey and Forbes and has a similar mission. "We had great conversations about how to bring inclusion and sustainability into the workforce," says Kom. "Brenda also shared so many stories from her tenure in the games industry, being called a MILF and shit like that. So unprofessional. But she's a tall, blonde woman. That gets noticed, it gets attention—sometimes unwanted atten- tion. A lot of her stories were preparing me for that reality I'd have to face, ultimately. And I did. We do what we have to do." The business also faced the same chal- lenges that any small video game company has to deal with: it's hard to get games funded and shipped. Loc Dao was working as the head of the National Film Board's digital studio when his organization approached Silicon Sisters about making a game based on one of its classic shorts, The Cat Came Back. "They delivered a killer prototype that the NFB didn't move forward with—it had nothing to do with [Silicon Sisters], just because of budgets and the costs of making a video game," says Dao. "But the game was so addictive, in a good way. You could tell it would have been a hit. It really hurt. It was so compelling. We just fell in love with it." In the end, Bailey wound her studio down in 2018. She still believes that it was just ahead of its time: "We went a bit early. The #MeToo movement hadn't happened yet. I think it would have been a different story... the types of work-for-hire contracts we were being offered were just not aligned with caring deeply about high-quality video games for girls." For example, she says, Silicon Sisters was approached about making a game based on Kim Kardashian. "At that time, she was really only famous for a leaked sex tape," says Bailey. "I couldn't figure out what that would look like." Eventually, after Kardashian's popular- ity ballooned, American game developer Glu Mobile produced Kim Kardashian: Hol- lywood. It became one of the most popular games in the iOS App Store. "I think if you figure out what girls want to play, you can make buckets of money and create great experiences," Bailey says. "I did a lecture on that game at [the Game Developers Con- ference] and broke down how they did it and made it work. We were a little bit early, but that opportunity remains. I've seen some good games being designed." Episode V: The First JEDI After a brief "midlife crisis" during which she studied at the UBC Allard School of Law, Bailey became the executive director of DigiBC, the nonprofit that aims to accel- erate the growth of the province's creative technology sector. "I had been frustrated for a long time, both when the BC Liber- als and the NDP were in charge, about us not really seeing the opportunity in the tech sector," says Bailey. "I was bugging [then-premier] John Horgan about it and he essentially said, 'If you want to fix this, you could put your hand up.'" Bailey grew up in an NDP town and had parents who were NDP supporters, but she wasn't sure if she was. "I'm a businessper- son who cares about social issues. I wasn't sure if those two things could live together. But I was thinking about the NDP of 40 years ago. In this NDP, absolutely they can." P O L I T I C S

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