#SHUFFLEPUCK CAFE UBISOFT SERIES#

It was difficult to implement processes, and difficult to be a project manager knowing that I was the only woman and the youngest employee of the subsidiary. It was a great experience, but a bit difficult. I said yes, and so I helped to create Big Bad Wolf, and worked on The Council.

Six months after that, three employees of Cyanide decided to go to Bordeaux to open a subsidiary of the studio, and asked me if I wanted to go with them. They hired me on full-time at the end of the internship. It was a great opportunity to prove what I was able to do, and to see if I liked the job. The cool thing was that my manager was out on paternity leave, so I was in charge of my first big project, Blood Bowl 2, almost alone. OF: I began my career with an internship at Cyanide Studio as a project management assistant. How did your career begin, and what led you to Ubisoft? Everyone notices you, talks to you, but from my experience, I think they’re much more aware, and I haven’t had any experiences that were nearly as negative. You do tend to stand out a bit more, since there aren’t as many women in videogames. OF: No, not at all! Quite the contrary, actually. Have you experienced similar sexism in the games industry? OF: I don’t think so, because it was not the main reason that I quit, but it definitely didn’t encourage me to continue. You mentioned that engineering school was sexist do you think you would have stuck with it if your classmates were more accepting? I learned that I’m very bad at 3D modeling and level design (laughs), but that Unity is a really useful tool to prototype really quickly, even if you don’t have much experience. OF: I made a puzzle game with a cube that you had to turn and rotate into different positions to find your way out through the exit. What kind of Unity games did you make? What did you learn from the process?

It was really cool we worked in the mornings, and in the afternoon we had time to work on our personal projects. At the end of the day, it was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.Īfter that, I found a school in Paris’ La Défense district called the Institute of Internet and Multimedia, and earned a master’s degree in multimedia project management with a videogame focus. It was difficult to bond with my classmates when most of them didn’t want to accept me as a real engineer. The school was far away, the lessons didn’t interest me, and I felt like many people were sexist. It seemed like a good choice, and I even began studying robotics at a school of engineering, but I only stayed for three months. I was always interested in new technology, and since I was not bad in school, I pursued scientific studies. So, like many people, I chose the most basic course of study possible.

Olivia Forni: When I was young, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Where did you grow up? What did you study in school? What did you want to be when you grew up?

#SHUFFLEPUCK CAFE UBISOFT SERIES#

We spoke with her recently as part of the Women of Ubisoft series to learn a bit more about her journey and career in videogames. She also handles communications between different studios working on the same project, to make sure that all the teams are working together toward a common goal. It’s her job to create and check the team’s tasks, assign them to the correct people, and to make sure they’re understood and delivered on time. As a product coordinator at Ubisoft Bordeaux, Olivia Forni is responsible for planning the processes used by mission designers in Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

Shufflepuck cafe ubisoft