Meet the Magnopians: Blair McLaughlin
Blair has over 18 years of experience in the video games industry. She has worked on titles including Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and 2.5, Disney Infinity, Star Wars Rebels: Recon Missions, Epic Mickey 1 & 2, Ducktales: Remastered, Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force, and DDR: Disney Channel Edition. She joined Magnopus in 2022 as a Project Manager and has worked on multiple top-secret projects, as well as the Augmented Reality Education App for the Holocaust Museum Los Angeles.
Tell us more about your job role at Magnopus
I’m a project manager for the operations team on the studio side of Magnopus, so I help manage the internal project teams by generating reports, running meetings, coordinating people and general organization. I primarily support the team in their day-to-day operations and make sure we are meeting client specifications for a project.
What’s your origin story, how did you get to where you are today?
I grew up refurbishing arcade cabinets in the garage with my dad, so I’ve always loved video games. In 2005 when I was out on my own looking for a job, a friend of mine lined up an interview for me and helped me write my first ever resume. Knowing nothing about the company or position I was interviewing for, I turned up at the location and in the lobby hung a huge Disney sign!
I ended up landing a job as a QA tester at Disney and after that, moved around various places in a myriad of jobs including licensing and legal, localization, production and project management. Then in 2022, I applied at Magnopus for this job, and the rest is history!
What attracted you to Magnopus in the first place?
I’d had my eye on Magnopus for a while. I was drawn to how secretive and low-key they were, but how amazing the work being produced was. Also, the name Magnopus / Magnum Opus, I was like “these people are talented. I want to work with these people!”.
What is one app, or software, you couldn’t do your job without?
I am obsessed with Google Sheets. I like formulas and automating things (I even have a personal budget spreadsheet that I’ve been perfecting for the last five years) and I see spreadsheets as a sort of puzzle.
What skills are essential for anyone in your role?
The first one is to learn how to communicate with different types of people. Everyone likes to communicate a bit differently, and as someone whose job relies on people communicating with you, you have to figure out how people communicate and adapt to them.
The second is multitasking. As a PM you’ll always be spinning 20 plates at once and it’s important to not get overwhelmed by that and just learn to embrace the chaos.
Lastly, and linked to number 2, is to be flexible. I’m constantly learning to be more flexible, change on the fly, and be open to other ways of solving problems.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned in your career?
Try everything once. My career history is full of loads of different types of roles and it helped me land on something I really enjoy doing now. You never know what you’re capable of until you do it. And don’t let the things that don’t fulfil you take up too much of your time.
If you could have any other job in the world, what would it be?
It sounds tedious, but I’d love to be a librarian. I’ve been a student librarian before and I loved the quiet organization and repetition of the job. Plus, unlimited access to all the books.
Where would you most like to travel to in the world?
I haven’t done a lot of travelling in my life so far, but my friend and I have recently become obsessed with luxury sleeper trains. We’ve been talking about taking the Orient Express journey in one of their suite cars, (with 24-hour butler service and unlimited champagne) so maybe one day, we will make that happen.
