Vantaggi
Magmic is a nice little studio to spend some time at while planning your next career move. The company is located just off Ottawa's Byward Market. The products they work on, while often uninspiring, provide a good base to hone your Game Dev skill on. While I worked there the team I was with was excellent. A lot of effort was put forth by the lead to make sure we were a tight-knit group. Any time there was trouble for one of us, everyone would step up to help meet the challenge. Though there were periods of crunch it never felt that bad because everyone pitched in instead of leaving it on one or two people.
Svantaggi
The project stake-holders occasionally made it difficult to achieve a decent work-life balance. The last project I worked on started with a period of crunch already expected towards the end of the project. Like I said above, it wasn't that bad, but regardless crunch should never be something that is planned into a schedule. The office itself is quite dingy. The carpets are really old and are at the point where you cannot tell that they were cleaned the night before. The furniture around the office is in various states of disrepair. The only time serious effort was put into making the space look good was when a client was visiting in which case a façade of "hip game studio" would be put up overnight only to crumble a few days later. The big con is the company's financial woes. Magmic has often leaned upon its wealthy founder and CEO John Criswick in the past to bail it out of trouble. This strategy failed in early 2016 when the majority of the staff were temporarily laid off when the company was unable to balance its debts and payroll.