Careers | Board Games
2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up
Kids Games | Family Games
What makes a good game good? Or, for that matter, a great game great? Anomalies aside — Trivial Pursuit is one of those — a good or great game, besides fostering social interaction or being just plain fun, should have at least the follow- ing characteristics:
* It should be easy to get into, which means, also, having simple rules;
* It should offer an opening game, mid-game, and endgame, each of which differs from the other;
* It should have replay value — that is, the game does not become repetitive or boring over time;
* It should have a level of complexity that requires decision making rather than relying mostly on luck.
Some games that do not conform to all of the above still deserve a special place in the ranks of the best games. In Careers, for example, luck is probably a greater factor than strategy, but the game, nonetheless, endures.
Careers has been around since 1955. It was self-published by its inventor, James Cooke Brown, a sociologist known primarily as a science fiction author and the creator of the artificial language Loglan. (Yes, there is an international flock of Loglanists.) His 1970 novel, The Troika Incident, explored a free knowledge plat- form similar to the Internet and called for social change through open education. Brown died in 2000 at age 78. His single game, Careers, has become a classic.
Many “classic” games have been around for so long because, well, because our grandparents played them as kids, then bought them for our parents, who, in turn, bought them for us. Some of these favorites — the “throw-dice-and-move” variety of games based primarily on luck — were not very good two generations ago and certainly haven’t gotten any better over time. Why, then, have they persisted? Why are they still so popular? Alas, that’s a whole ’nother book. Right now, the ques- tion is, why has Careers lasted — and should you buy the game for your family?
I probably played Careers when it first came out in the late 1950s, a time when I really didn’t know the makings of a good game. What captured my atten- tion was that Careers is a game where you, the player, decide what you have to achieve in order to win. You set your own goals. The game is divided into three basic categories of life: money, happiness, and fame, translated into the symbols of dollar signs, hearts, and stars. Maybe fame is not really one of life’s necessities, but judging from today’s boom in Internet blogs and “reveal yourself” websites such as YouTube and Flickr, I would guess it’s high enough on many people’s lists.
Anyway, you choose how much money, how much happiness, and how much fame, up to a total of 60 points, you would need to win — what today’s games refer to as “victory conditions.” Two dice take your pawn around the board’s perimeter. Land on a space that allows entry into college or into a profession, and, if you meet the requirements, you can take that career path. Requirements usually mean money, but experience also counts, so you can return to the same career path and it won’t cost you anything the second or third time. In fact, each time you go, you get an extra experience card, and these move-instead-of-using-the-dice cards are crucial in bypassing the many pitfalls you can encounter en route; after your fourth visit along the same career path, you even get a free trip to Florida or Hawaii or Majorca, or elsewhere, depending on which edition you’re playing.
You use only one die along a career path, accumulating one or more of life’s necessities on your journey, but different career paths offer a different balance of each. Hollywood, for example, gives you the most fame, whereas Big Business will provide you with more money. It may be a good idea to go to college first, since a college degree is often a requirement to get into a career with entry fees waived or reduced. College can also raise your annual salary — which you get every time you pass Payday — resulting in a much faster accumulation of wealth.
Of course, there are hazards in every career: in Farming you can lose half your cash in a hailstorm, and a scandal in Hollywood will give you 10 star points but cost you all your happiness; in Big Business, a slump will cut your salary by half, and in Politics, if you’re “caught with mink” you lose half your fame. Even in your journey around the perimeter you can be forced to dig into your savings as a result of shopping, rent, hobbies, inflation, or, of course, taxes.
Because of the dice, chance plays a substantial role in Careers, though, one might say, this is true to life. It may be a major detriment for serious gamers, but, for me, it doesn’t minimize the value of one of the first designs to allow players to choose their own objective. For this alone, Careers deserves a spot in the top 100.
Careers is more than just a fun game — it offers an insight into our chang- ing interests and values, and also points out variations across different cultures. Careers has been sold worldwide under such names as Carrière, Carreiras, Carrières, Karriere, Karriär, Il Gioco delle Carriere, and Jogo das Profissões. The number of titles and makers tells you just how well the game has persisted. It has been published by Parker Brothers, Pressman Toy, Tiger Electronics, and Winning Moves in the U.S. (it was off the market from 1984 until reissued by Tiger in the 1990s), and in Europe by Schmidt, Clipper, Estrela, Gibsons Games, Jumbo, Majora, and Miro Company.
The careers themselves have changed over the years, reflecting shifting voca- tional interests. Farming, Expedition to the Moon, and Going to Sea from the 1950s edition were gone by the 1970s, replaced by Ecology, Teaching, and Sports. Computer Science was added in one edition.
The corner spaces Payday and Hospital have stayed the same, but Florida Vacation and Park Bench have not. A Hawaiian Holiday seemed more glamorous than zipping down to Florida by the 1970s. In Europe, the original Franz Schmidt German edition offered a holiday in Majorca (Urlaub auf Mallorca), but a later German Parker Brothers edition brought players to a mansion in Switzerland (Landsitz im Tessin). Park Bench, named for the place where the poor and unfor- tunate spent their days — and often nights — was superseded by Unemployment, a term that fit the upper echelons as much as the down-and-out.
The game is usually recommended for ages eight and up, but at least one German edition reads 10 years and up, and the 60 minutes suggested playing time is shown on other versions as from 45 to 90 minutes. Incidentally, Careers for Girls made a brief, unpopular showing in 1990, featuring career paths for Rock Star, Fashion Designer, and Super Mom, while removing some of the game’s key strategic elements; it was a bad career move.
The 1971 Parker Brothers edition, for reasons I can’t fathom, reduced the eight career paths to six. Hollywood was changed to Show Biz, and Expedition to the Moon became Space; we had, after all, reached the moon in 1969 and were set- ting our sights on the planets. Sports was added and Uranium Prospecting in Peru eliminated. European vocations in later editions included Theater, Teaching, and Environmental Protection. It is not surprising which two career paths survived over the decades: Big Business and Politics.
As a thematic game, Careers tells us something about society and culture, and, based on the goals players choose, may even reveal a little about the players as well. It’s to be hoped that Careers will be on the market as long as there are — well, careers. The current version, marketed by Winning Moves, is pretty faithful to the original, except for some minor modernizing; they restored the earlier career paths, with the exception of my favorite, Uranium Prospecting in Peru, which is now merely Exploring. Still, if you can’t find an original, this is the best contem- porary edition of the classic game.
So, should you buy Careers for your family?
Buy it for yourself, but let the kids play, too.
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