Insert a couple of quarters and watch the game start.
Carly Magnus is jumping over barrels and climbing ladders to reach the top and land her dream job at Ubisoft as a character designer.
A third year Studio Art major concentrating in Painting and Drawing, Magnus is a campus ambassador for Ubisoft. Her duties and responsibilities include promoting Ubisoft games as well as organizing gaming events to bring the Georgia State community together.
When she first heard about the ambassador position from a friend, she was both excited and hesitant. As a full-time student and employee of University Housing, she wondered if she could take on another job and still be able to focus on her studies. When she asked her older brother, he simply told her, “Just do it.”
With her brother’s straight-forward blessing, she submitted her application and the following day she was called for an extensive phone interview. By night time, she had the job.
Art and Georgia State have been running in the Magnus family for a few generations. Her brother, father and members of her extended family have all graduated from Georgia State with degrees such as Painting and Drawing, Education, History and Religious Studies.
She knew from a young age+ art was something she wanted to pursue.
“With art being around me all my life, I was constantly in competition with where I knew my dad was at. My goal was to just keep getting better,” Magnus said.
Anime and manga have also been an inspiration and hobby for Magnus. She draws inspiration from characters and incorporates them into her own drawings. She associates her childhood with watching Dragonball Z.
“The animation and details catch my eye more now. It’s also about space and fighting, I don’t know what’s cooler,” Magnus said.
A hardcore gamer from childhood, she has fond memories of playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and the Final Fantasy series with her older brother.
“I just really enjoyed the game more than anything and still play it all the time today,” Magnus said. “I hold it so special because it was the first game I remember playing and remember playing it a lot with my brother.”
She currently plays her Xbox 360 and games such as Assassin’s Creed, Halo and the Elder Scrolls series. The Assassin’s Creed series has had such an effect on Magnus that she decided that Ubisoft was the studio she wanted to work for over others.
Magnus tends to lean towards single-player campaigns because she enjoys the immersion and character development.
“ The story is so important to me. If something is lacking story wise, then I usually won’t like the game unless the gameplay is extremely fun,” Magnus said.
With a vested interest in art, gaming and anime, Magnus decided she wanted to become a character developer.
Magnus has held the position for almost two months now and while the job is everything she hoped for, she has had her fair share of challenges.
“I’m technically working as an outside source so my flyers have to be placed on the public boards. I have put them up on the grip strips, but they get taken down at the end of the day,” Magnus said.
She has to get creative to spread the word without being “just another person handing out flyers on campus.”
“My job is really to come up with different tactics,” Magnus said. “I’ve learned that flyers will make people aware, but not necessarily like the page. From that, I’ve learned that personal connection is the best way to get people.”
February Frenzy, one of Magnus’s current objectives with Ubisoft , is a competition against other colleges. The schools face off one another, tournament-style, and the college with more Facebook likes proceeds to the next round. Individuals who enter in February Frenzy on the Georgia State Ubisoft page are entered to win $1,000 cash and other gaming swag from Ubisoft and Origin.
“I really am enjoying myself with it. I definitely have had a hard time keeping up and balancing everything. It’s getting easier as time goes on though. Just like anything new, it’s had its challenges,” Magnus said.
