The Gamer career is one that's always made me scratch my head at it, and then annoys me when I have to deal with my Sims always getting a Want for it. To me, quite a few of the Seasons career tracks have had a fair share of clumsy writing behind them (for instance, going from a humble magazine editor straight to being the owner of a media empire, or a pianist to a symphony conductor to a...rock band star?), but the Gamer goes as far to just appeal to an immature fantasy of what gaming is like, and the final 10th level of it just doesn't have the powerful mmph to it compared to becoming the Mayor, a criminal mastermind, a business tycoon or a literal superhero.

I think it's a bit of a shame since especially now, there are quite a few viable career paths related to gaming in real life that'd be interesting to explore. I think it'd be interesting to have the career path be revamped into one that's more focused around video making and eSports, with the mid to high levels of the career path being oriented around going from a video creator to a pro streamer and an eSports celebrity. I wouldn't mind having some parts of the current tree being implemented, like Gold Farmer as a 1st level part, and Guild Leader either being a 2nd level part of just leading a smallish guild of folks to a very high level of leading a large, famous gaming clan/team. I'm not as sure about all the specifics in between the low and highblevels though.

So I'd like to hear all your thoughts about this career path: how you engage/deal with it in-game, and how you'd personally change it - if at all!

Professional game design is to gamers with some knowledge of programming what being a rock star is to rock fans with some musical ability. It's the career that you dream about having when you're young and naive that you think will make it so your job is the same as your hobby. Of course, in reality game development is a horrible field to go into and you'll be overworked and underpaid, but kids don't know that. So yeah, I'd say a game dev who wears some sort of sci-fi suit to work is up there with superheroes and rock stars. None of the careers in this game really make sense - in the entertainment career at one point you're a knight, after all.

I mean kestrellyn is right, but I'd still prefer a "Game Developer" over a "Professional Gamer" career. Even if it was presented as unrealistic. Or even a generic "Programmer" career.

I pretend they make sense? Obviously, level one is tech support. Yay. Level two is probably that job my husband had in college that was switching the tapes at 2 am, on weekends, that were the server backups. And answering the helpdesk phone if some prof called because he couldn't remember his email password (my dad). And so forth and so on.

The music career is profoundly stupid, and makes no sense. Just pretend they say different things than they do.

Yeah, you definitely have to keep in perspective the Sims' twisted, much more lighthearted take on reality when looking at these careers. But I think that for the most part, the base game careers have a well-defined sense of progression which fit in well in the wacky world of The Sims, and most 4th/7th/10th levels of a career are about at the same power level as other 4th/7th/10th levels of other careers. But the Gamer career...doesn't really fit under that definition.


Funny you mention that; there is a Game Development career branch added in Life Stories that actually works pretty well for that. I know someone made a mod which converts it along with the Entertainment career and the career rewards for both over to The Sims 2, but I can't remember where I got it from. I just remember it was on a site other than ModTheSims.


Yeah, I don't get what was up with the Music career added in Seasons. They made one for The Sims 1 that worked well, could've just copied it over like they did for all the other base game careers. I wonder if it'd be possible to make a career mod which purposely overrides an official career instead of having it be seperate?

Life Stories @ Maty (gives you 4 extra LTW)

I don't use careers very much and when I do it is mostly custom ones so a default one for this would be good. I only know of a medieval default.

Do any of the sims careers make sense? They're just a means of making money with a different title and hardly introduce much gameplay outside of the few rewards. I mean, you can become mayor but no one treats you like the mayor. And you can even have two mayors living right next door to each other.

This is why I prefer OFB businesses or making money from things like fishing or gardening. They actually have gameplay and get you involved and make more sense. I don't need my sim to be a doctor for example when doing so introduces no interesting gameplay and there are townies for filling that void. I can't however have a place that sells murder robots without player intervention.

Everything in the sims 2 is usable to me. I just have to mod it and use my imagination. I use a lot of custom careers, so I'm not really familiar with the gamer one. But if I decide to use it, then I would create playable lots to spice things up and make gameplay interesting. (Simlogical institutional sign which allows you to take days off from school/work needed) Actually it might be interesting to play, since Midge the Tree has made improvements to computers.

Looking at the first levels, I wouldn't allow the sim to go into work at all. Activity should be all bedroom based with a computer. Sims surroundings should reflect the poverty of their salary or the lack of personal space at their parents home. Or maybe they're stuck in a one-room slum apartment downtown. They are boring, but they provide a contrast with my other sims who are full of drama and doing too much. As they level up (allow them to return to work for promotions) I suddenly need a community site, an internet cafe, so they can play in competitions.. (Allias's internet mod @ Insiminator is useful for this) As time progresses all my sim does is work. They lack the friends or the only friends they're allowed are the ones they've met online. They have money, but since they spend all time working they don't get to spend it, relations suffer. Or maybe they spend to much of it and buy sports cars and are broke again. All personality dependant. Maybe their online girlfriend (who lives in a sub neighbourhood) is a grandma with 6 different kids. Lots of places for the story to carry me, depending on what the sim does.

I would mod the career reward so it's available to use when building (and would stick it on Tiki Island). This would then allow for the Grand Event, when the gamer sim and close computer friends compete for grand prizes on the holiday island of Tiki. Pictures to be taken and displayed proudly. Actually you can play all this without mods, but then the sim will have to do a lot after work. This career will also max out the gaming hobby, so sim will pick up additional skills like teaching others. Maybe keep the sim playing poker to mimic an addiction. Plenty of ideas.

In my humble opinion i feel as though TS2 was meant to be a silly satire of life, i mean we do have random alien impregnations, cow plants, money trees and people becoming long time friends after meeting one another for 10 minutes. I dont think anything that happens in the sims is a stretch

I mostly use the career levels as labels. None of the Gamer ones I use at all. It's a silly career for giggles.

Yes! I agree with OP very much. My game would be filled with geeks if I had separate video game related career paths XD I'd have Programmers, Hackers, Livestreamers---everything! I've tried using custom ones, but I'm too critical when it comes to spelling and grammar of the text. Best I've managed is putting the Job Stoppinator token in my sim's inventory when they reach a career level that fits them. That way they'll never progress beyond it.

Gamer is a bit weird because the lower-level jobs don't mean much to me in there. I can accept career progression generally, and even in the upper levels of Gamer, as being career connections that make sense to Simmers in a way that they wouldn't to humans. For example, I assume that all musicians need to know the rules of music before breaking them. By extension, that the top two levels of Music involve the Sim learning enough about how music works and how to interpret it creatively in concert with others, to enable them to strike out on their own and create a music revolution. (I do assume that the genre would change depending on the Sim, not necessarily be rock).

Even the Hacker career from Sims 1 makes more sense, and I've got a version someone recreated... ...though I still leave Gamer in as an option, and occasionally someone takes it (usually they're either teenagers who I could imagine being attracted by a job literally called "Noob", or people desperate for a job of any sort).

Slightly off topic, but thanks for clearing something up - in the 14 years I have been playing this game, I did not realise Captain Hero was a superhero situation. I legitimately assumed that this was a high up title American law enforcement departments might actually have (after all, on the TV shows they do have Captains). Oops!

Back on topic - It does frustrate me slightly that in order to progress Sims jump around a bunch of wildly unrelated jobs within the same 'path' (Dance being another one - aerobics to professional ballet, with goodness knows what in between? Really?)
In some careers I even let Sims do a career track they aren't qualified for because the actual job doesn't fit it. Currently, Aileen Redhawk is desperate for money because her husband left her. She's not necessarily cut out for a career in Science. Doesn't mean I can't let her be a Test Subject having things done to her for money. No actual science required at all, and probably a quick buck.

I might use the gamer career and just pretend it's about testing board games in my BACC which is taking place in the 19th century before computer and video games were invented.I might have sims take partime jobs when they move in just to make sure they have an income while they work on skills to get a full time job and I'll be adding a verion of my job Mod that allow teens to tak both full time and part time jobs because I use one that lets them find their own place if their childhood home is too crowded.