Career ladder

A career is an ordered list of levels, each with a title, pay, schedule, and promotion requirements. State owned: per character, current career and level, and a job performance meter. Update rule: each work period, performance changes based on attendance and inputs such as mood, skills, or task completion; when performance and the next level's requirements are met, the character is promoted; very low performance or missed shifts cause demotion or firing. Inputs come from other mechanics (skills, relationships, needs); outputs are income, schedule, and status. Canonical form: The Sims 2, where adult careers have ten levels, teen careers three, promotion requires advances in three skills, a number of household friends, and high mood, and missing work two days in a row gets a Sim fired; The Sims 4 adds daily career tasks and branching tracks.

A long-term arc for one character. The player schedules skill-building and socializing around work, watches the performance bar before a promotion, and feels the status jump of a new title and pay. It gives sandbox life a direction.

• number of levels and spacing of requirements
• requirement types: skills, relationships, mood, or task completion
• performance meter rate and decay
• branching tracks at upper levels
• random work events with choices, such as The Sims chance cards
• pay and schedule curve across levels

• Requirements become a checklist that drains spontaneity from life simulation.
• Rabbit-hole careers where the Sim leaves the lot make the career invisible to play.
• Pay grows faster than costs, so money stops mattering by mid-career.

• Career requirements route characters' free time into skill and friend grinding, coupling work to social and needs systems.
• Schedule conflicts between household members' careers create household logistics problems.
• Promotions raise income and enable home upgrades, a reinforcing loop toward comfort.

• Can generated workplaces with colleagues, tasks, and politics replace authored rabbit-hole careers without large writing costs?
• Does requirement opacity, like a real workplace, make careers more engaging than explicit checklists?