But in more industrial games, everyone works. And their job is directly tied to the success of your base in a tangible way. It provides specific resources or services you need, not generic cash.

This means the people slot into your mental framework.

That's The Farmer. That's The Researcher.

If they all just got paid to do whatever job, you'd never remember what their jobs were. They'd become generic.

This can be clearly seen in The Sims, where the jobs are distinguished mostly by when you go to work and what skills are relevant. Whether you're a clown or a hacker doesn't matter much if the pay's the same- just rank up a different skill and go to work at a different hour.

This fungability creates a vagueness in our lifestyles.

In The Sims you're probably going to have just one or two folks working, their story is mostly that they are the ones working. WHAT JOB barely matters.

And obviously you can take whatever startup choices you want, which can include absolutely bonkers-hard challenge approaches or the easiest thing imaginable.

Either way, eventually your core obsessive inhabitant will crash out, and your base will end. Your challenges are largely self-inflicted, even in paradise you will destroy yourself.

It changes a completely open-ended vague runway to nowhere into a challenge to build the best/biggest you can en route to self-destruction, and perhaps to take the most away from the base if it's linked to a long-term civilization.

Obviously for a beginner, it's a fairly normal progression.

But the midgame and endgame are more focused by your startup choices, and I think that will create a much more natural and rewarding endpoint.