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[Felix T. Katz]

I am currently working on the design for a sci-fi RPG set on Mars. I wanted to allow the player to partake in various jobs in order to earn money, and more importantly to have another fun thing to do. I wanted to put some amount of realism in these, such as if the player were to be working as a programmer, they'd get a heavily simplified, yet functional programming language to deal with.

I was wondering how I'd do this with common jobs such as store clerk. I don't want to have the player just sitting there at the counter, completing boring transactions with customers. Would I just avoid these kinds of jobs completely? Or would I make it into some sort of mini-game?

[valrus]

Well, if the job is mundane, I figure robots will handle it.  (I mean, even now we have self-driving cars and self-checkouts; we probably won't be driving tractors and counting out change on Mars.)  For almost any mundane occupation X, being an X will just mean "supervising the robots that actually do the X".  That could be a high-skill job (say, actually manipulating the farmbot AI) or a low-skill job (maybe flipping switches to stop and start the pre-written AI scripts of the various bots).  Even the latter could make a neat little puzzle game.

Or, the job simply won't exist, the way meter readers and travel agents are increasingly rare these days.  Even if there are still physical stores (rather than just Amazon Prime Mars Edition), it'll probably just be that your account is debited whenever you leave the store with items.  (All the basic tech for that already exists, too, I think; we just haven't tied the pieces together in that way.)

On the other hand, there may always be some jobs where being-a-human is important and valuable, like nursing, or psychotherapy, or prostitution.  And I can picture that future high-class establishments might want human staff to distinguish themselves.  (Woah, that new shoe store near the hub is so high class that they have human clerks!)

But anyway, I'm rambling.  You *could*, if you wanted, make it so that there's one basic minigame (supervise robots) and then theme that as a bunch of different jobs (farmer, miner, chef, stevedore, delivery man, masseuse, etc.).

[Felix T. Katz]

Thanks for the great advice!

I was thinking of having some sort of automation system that the player can control, but I wasn't quite sure if that was the way to go.

So now, would it be a good idea to have player-owned businesses? I imagine managing a business/company would play like a tycoon game, where you control the prices, locations, staff, etc. Would this be just a small side thing the player can do, or should it be a more involving experience for the player?

[baconman]

Inversely proportion your thinking. Make as many "job minigames" as you can concieve, take what works (and is fun/contributes to your game) and scrap what doesn't. Consider the different kinds of fun in games (Planning vs. Twitch, Speedrunning vs. Completionism, etc.), and plan accordingly. If it works, and ALREADY FITS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE GREATER GAME, DO THAT.

[wccrawford]

Definitely don't bother implementing and polishing boring game jobs.  It'll sap your drive to complete the game and the players will hate it.

IMO, it would be better to provide the player with others ways to earn money on the way to doing what they want to be doing, such as getting paid for picking up trash along the way and recycling it.  It makes traveling less boring and gives them cash, too.  Maybe as they progress in skill, there are more things to do, such as repair leaky pipes or rewire broken electrical boxes.  Maybe some morally-questionable things like turning people in for stealing cable or such as well.  Or planting spy cameras in locations likely to catch crimes in progress and selling the footage to the cops, news, or blackmailing the criminals.

Cripes, these are sounding like really good ideas.  lol

If you implement day-jobs, makes sure they're *fun* somehow, and that it doesn't put the player out too much to go do them.