Meet Alijah Mallula

For aspiring audio artists like Alijah, few opportunities could be more exciting than an Audio Artist internship with Electronic Arts (EA) in Redwood City, CA — an opportunity she beat out over 600 applicants to secure.

“I was shocked, for sure,” she says, “and to be honest, I still can’t believe it. It feels like a dream.”

For three months this summer, Alijah worked and learned alongside the audio engineers and sound designers in EA’s Maxis Studios, the developers behind the massively successful series “The Sims.”

“As an Audio Artist Intern with the Maxis audio team, I’ve learned sound design, dialogue editing and how the team works to create cohesive audio in a professional game development pipeline,” Alijah says. “Pretty much any sound that is heard within the game, the audio team creates!”

If that sounds like it requires a lot of painstaking detail and consideration, it’s because it does.

“Audio adds an emotional layer that helps create a cohesive player experience along with the visuals. A door shutting isn’t just a door shutting — there is a whole story of why and how the door got shut, and different sounds will bring out different feelings.”

Though nervous when she arrived, Alijah found that her classes had left her well-prepared to hit the ground running at Maxis. But, she says, it’s still been an enormous learning experience.

“My classes and professors in the Carson Center have taught me the tools, theories and industry standards that I used in my job. At Maxis, I feel like I grew in my ability to communicate and develop my ideas and technical skills.”

After this three-month immersion into the world of Maxis, Alijah is excited to be back in Lincoln to apply all she’s learned to a variety of projects alongside her fellow EMA students and to see where this passion could take her after graduation.

“This experience taught me so much more about what I want to do in the future. I love creating sounds for experiences that make people feel happy and seen.”