31st July 2011

Eastside Games Open For Business

eastside gamesVancouver’s DES Games, Jason Bailey, and a mountain of cash have all gotten together to form the latest greatest games studio, Eastside Games. This exciting new studio aims to be a powerhouse of Social and Mobile games, focusing on Android and the new Google+ platforms as well as their current staples in Facebook, the open web and iOS.

The new studio aims to make quirky and original titles with a bit of edge and a lot of humour. Studio Manager Josh Nilson stated that “this is not your Mom’s Farmville, but she will spend the grocery money playing it anyway.”
Eastside Games Founders
•    DES Games developed the popular game ‘Pot Farm‘, a unique and highly successful social game on Facebook. Eastside games retains ownership of Pot Farm and 5 other iOS and Facebook games, with over 1 million Monthly Active Users and over 750,000 fans.

•    Jason Bailey, CEO of Eastside Games, was the co-founder of Super Rewards which pioneered monetization on the facebook platform, paving the way for the virtual goods based games that dominate the platform today. Jason bootstrapped Super Rewards from zero to a 100mm run rate to a healthy eight digit exit all in under 18 months.

•    Josh Nilson remains as Studio Manager.  Josh has been working for the last 2 years as Studio Manager at DES Games and helped turn it into one of the most successful and profitable social gaming studios in Vancouver. He  has become an industry go to for expertise in the area.  Prior to that he worked at Relic Entertainment contributing to the successful and popular RTS games, Dawn of War II and Company of Heroes. He was a Project Manager for an innovative and successful web development startup, Sitemasher.

•    Galan Akin remains as Creative Director. Galan has over 14 years experience in the game industry, as a Lead designer, design consultant, and creative director on a wide variety of projects, from big budget console titles to mobile and social games. At Radical Entertainment he played key roles guiding hit games such as the Simpsons Hit and Run and Scarface: the World is Yours to completion and has extensive experience in IP creation. Galan has been working in the Social games space for 3 years and is developing some exciting new properties for both the Social and Mobile spaces.

•    A pile of cash (1.5 million) has been raised to clean up the cap table, leaving Jason Bailey as majority owner, as well as being earmarked for growing the studio.

•    Eastside Games begins its life as a dynamic and exciting startup leading the creative charge in Vancouver with 2 profitable IPs and more in the works:the pot farm game

  • In Pot Farm players help their Uncle Floyd and their friends grow over 60 different  “crops”, make hemp oil, brownies, “potcorn”, and try to protect their farms from that mean lo’ Ranger Dick. Loads of useful items, quests, and over 300 levels keeps fans coming back for more.
  • In I Like Slots, players compete on a wide variety of fantastic – looking slot machines. Engaging gameplay and 100s of prizes make for a superior slot experience.
  • Launching soon, Zombinis is a collectable battle game featuring adorable and somewhat explosive zombies with detachable body parts and addicting gameplay. Assemble your army of furry (or zombinisscaly, or feathery) minions out of discarded stuffed animal parts and battle your friends to become the undisputed ruler of Zombiniland!

The company is currently on the search for Producers, Project Managers, Engineers and Artists.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 31st, 2011 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Business News, Game Dev, National News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  1. NancyAnnFox
    11:09 am on October 22nd, 2011

    facebook.comDesgames.com was shut down on October 10, 2011. It was a subsidiary of East Side Games, who now is listed as the developer for I Like Slots/Stuff/Fish on Facebook. They brag over 40,000 players. Their Facebook page for Slots and Stuff have thousands of complaints that they never ever respond to. They do not provide customer support any more. The “Get Satisfaction” part of their site which used to get a reply has not had a reply in over one year. Dorothy Marie used to answer. I don’t even think she works for the company anymore. I know Pot Farm is your new up and coming app on FB, but please pay attention and REPAIR the games you have on Facebook already instead of ignoring all the posts. Facebook’s developers TOS says you must provide customer support and you must provide easy access to the game. The game doesn’t load half the time, needs constant refreshing, slots freeze on spinning, and there is no recourse with this developer. We created a complaint page for ILS players, hoping to get your attention. Please stop by and read what players are saying. If Jason Bailey is now in charge of ESGames, then he ought to know that your reputation is slowly going down the tubes because of not replying to plights of players.
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Like-Stuff-Complaint-Forum/

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