In this article I will talk about the research that went into creating a realistic job market for This Grand Life.
Just as in real life, there are different careers and occupations you can pursue. Some are harder to enter than others. As an example, to become a University Professor you need a PHD and years of experience, while a Janitor requires no experience. Of course, this difference in requirements is reflected in their respective salaries.
The first step - work out the career path from the entry level position all the way to the highest and most presitigious occupations. This was pretty straight forward, just visit careers websites and read some of their advice. For example, the education career path in the game goes something like this: Tutor -> Lecturer -> Research Scholar -> Professor. The next step was looking for the relative real life salaries of each occupation. I used websites like SalaryExpert which provide a nice overview of salaries in the US.
Based on these salaries, I could tweak the requirements and opportunities of each job to balance gameplay. For example, did you know a Janitor gets paid slightly more than a Kitchen Hand? I could bump up the experience requirements for a Janitor slightly to reflect this, or make the Kitchen Hand -> Chef career path more rewarding. I came across some pretty obscure sounding occupations during my research, like the Digestor Operator:
Some jobs even have multiple career paths. In the banking career path you can get an entry level position as a Credit Analyst with a Finance Degree. Or you could start as a Loan Officer if you don't have a degree yet, but have lots of sales experience. Eventually you will need to get that qualification to progress to higher tier occupations, but in the meantime you could start off earning a higher wage while studying at the same time.
To further make things more interesting, your Fun need decreases at a faster rate the more stressful and higher paying your position. So if you still have a crappy TV but work as an Investment Banker, expect to spend a lot of time each week satisfying the Fun need. Consider buying an expensive VR headset to satisfy that Fun need, or go watch Sports Games at the Stadium more often. It's OK, you can afford it!
You can download the free prototype from Itch.io, IndieDB or MediaFire and give it a try.
