Karriere – Carriere
by Bruce Whitehill
(This article is copyrighted and protected. Please do not reprint excerpts or in its entirety without permission)
Introduction
Careers is considered one of the classic commercial—that is to say, proprietary— American games. Most of these favorite family games, like Careers, were “throw-dice-and-move” games based primarily on luck. Why has a game like Careers persisted; why is it still around? And, as a game so dependent on the dice, where does the strategy come in?
Careers has been sold world-wide 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 in the U.S. by Parker Brothers, Pressman Toy, Tiger Electronics and Winning Moves; it was off the market from 1984 until reissued by Tiger in the 1990s. 
European publishers include Schmidt Spiele, Alga (Brio), Clipper, Estrela, Gibsons Games, Holdsworth Thos & Sons, John Waddington Ltd., Juegos Crone, Jumbo, Majora and Miro Company.
The American game has been listed for ages 8 and up, whereas one German edition reads 10 years and up and another is 12 and up. I don’t think American children are smarter or developer earlier than European children, and I can’t say what the reason for this age discrepancy is.
Also the 60 minutes suggested playing time is shown on other versions as from 45 to 90 minutes.
The discrepancies among the different versions regarding appropriate ages and average playing times could be due to some differences in the various editions, or a different evaluation.
The Inventor of Careers
Who invented Careers? His name is not known by very many in this context, since in the U.S. in the 1950s, and to a great extent still today, the name of the inventor was not put on the game box or the instructions. Careers was invented in 1955 and was self-published by its inventor, James Cooke Brown. It was not just his first game, it was the onlygame he ever published.
(Web photo; please contact me if you are the photographer.)
Although people do not connect his name with the game of Careers, his name is very famous in certain circles: James Cooke Brown, a sociologist, was known primarily as a science fiction author and creator of the artificial language, Loglan; there is actually an international flock of Loglanists who continue to use his unique language, albeit mostly at science fiction conventions and the like.
Brown’s 1970 novel, The Troika Incident (published by Doubleday) explored a free knowledge platform similar to the Internet and called for social change through open education. He would loved to have seen how the internet and social media such as Facebook played a part in 2011 uprisings in North Africa, but, unfortunately, Brown died in 2000 at age 78.
Setting Your Goal
Careers was unique for its time. It is a game where you, the player, decide what you have to achieve in order to win; you set your own goals. The box of the first versions read, “Parker Brothers Game of Optional Goals. 
The game of Careers is divided into three basic categories of life: fame, fortune and happiness, translated into the symbols of stars, dollar signs, and hearts. 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.
You choose how much fame, how much money, and how much happiness, up to a total of 60 “points,” you need to acquire in order to win—what today’s games refer to as “victory conditions.”
The Game Play
Two dice take your pawn around the perimeter of the board. 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. 
A “requirement” usually means money, but experience also counts, so you can return to the same career path and it won’t cost you anything the second and third times. In fact, each time you go, you get an extra “Experience Card,” (explained later); after your fourth visit along the same career path, you even get a free trip to Florida or Hawaii or Mallorca, 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; and college can raise your annual salary—which you get every time you pass “Payday”—resulting in a much faster accumulation of wealth.
When you go through a career—i.e., get a degree—you get an Experience card; the second time, two cards; three or more times, three cards.
Hazards
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 you lose 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.
Not only that, you can be sent to the Hospital or Park Bench, either by landing on a space that sends you there, or by being “bumped” by another player who lands on your space. Park Bench stands for unemployment, since in the early and mid 20th century in the U.S., men without work would often sit on a bench in the park, sometimes to read a discarded newspaper, sometimes to spend the night under that same newspaper.
On Park Bench, you’re stuck there unless you throw a 7, 11, or double, and in the Hospital, you have to stay there until you throw a 5 or less with two dice. But, you can pay your way out of these difficulties—on Park Bench, you can pay half your cash, and in the Hospital, you can give up half your salary, which is severe.
For a pdf of the rules in Icelandic, courtesy of Tomas V. Albertsson, click on the link below.
A Best Career and a Good Promotion
The most valuable occupation in the original Careers is Expedition to the Moon (the term “astronaut,” incidentally, is not used anywhere). 
There you can earn a fortune, raise your salary and earn lots of fame points, but there are severe risks – you can lose all your money and fame.
Phil Orbanes, in The Game Makers, his book on the History of Parker Brothers, explained the success of Careers “was due to the Space Race.” When the Russians successfully launched the satellite Sputnik, Americans were given a wake-up call and pushed for more scientists and engineers. “Careers became the perfect game for the time.”
Parker Brothers licensed the game and then added it to their 1957 line. To promote Careers, Macy’s Department Store, its flagship Herald Square building in New York City, agreed to set up “a human-sized game board and fill the store’s windows with Careers games.” Parker Brothers ads, including those for Careers, were placed in 30 magazines, and commercials were put on 60 television stations.
Changing Times and Cultural Transformations
There’s a socio-educational value to the game as well. It is clear that going through college has many benefits in terms of salary and being able to get into certain careers tuition-free. The game of Careers also serves as an insight into our changing interests and values over time and points out variations across different cultures.
The careers themselves have changed over the years, reflecting shifting vocational interests. “Farming,” “Expedition to the Moon” and “Going to Sea” in the 1950s were gone by the 1970s, replaced by “Ecology,” “Teaching” and “Sports.” “Computer Science” was added in one edition. The values changed as well, regarding how much it cost to enter the particular career, and the amounts of fame, fortune and happiness you could find in it.
The corner spaces “Payday” and “Hospital” have stayed the same, but “Florida Vacation” and “Park Bench” were modernized: a “Hawaiian Holiday” seemed more glamorous than just zipping down to Florida in the ‘70s. 
In Europe, the original German Franz Schmidt edition offered a holiday in Mallorca (“Urlaub auf Mallorca”), 
but a later German Parker Bros. edition brought players to a mansion in Switzerland (“Landsitz im Tessin”).
“Park Bench” was superceded by “Unemployment,” a term which fits the upper echelons as much as the down-and-out. 
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” (after all, we had reached the moon in 1969 and had now set 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, besides “College,” survived over the decades: “Big Business” and “Politics.”
It is also no surprise that a new version, “Careers for Girls,” failed terribly after making a brief, unpopular showing in 1990. Among the career paths it featured for girls was: “Rock Star,” “Fashion Designer” and “Super Mom”; at the same time, some of the game’s key strategic elements were removed; this was a bad career move.
Along with other changes in the game, rules changes in the later versions included receiving only 1 Experience Card anytime you graduated from a career (as opposed to the 2 or 3 I mentioned earlier). And in the original rules, when a player landed on your space, which would send you to Hospital, you could bargain with him—i.e., pay him off so you wouldn’t have to go.
The Winning Moves “retro” edition which is still available (2011) has restored most of the original features of the game.
Strategy vs. Luck
Because of the dice, chance plays a substantial role in “Careers,” though, one might say, this is true to life. But what about the strategic elements to the game?
Careers, Iceland; courtesy of Tomas V. Albertsson
First of all, there are two additional elements in the game besides the occupations and the formula for success that you choose yourself. These are the “Chance” cards in the form of Experience Cards, which I mentioned earlier, and Opportunity Cards; and these are obtained by landing on the right space on any of the career paths; there are also a surprisingly high number of spaces – eleven – on the outer track of the gameboard.
The Opportunity cards allow you to move to the career stated on the card, and four of the cards also give you free tuition to 4 different career paths. Going directly to a career means you bypass Payday, so you don’t receive any salary. Since your salary is liable to go up as the game progresses, it is better to get and use these cards early in the game.
The Experience cards allow you to move a certain number of spaces – 1 through 4 – instead of rolling the dice. These are crucial in order to avoid spaces on which you can lose half or all your cash, fame points or happiness points. You need to get these Experience cards as early as possible – but, of course, it’s still the luck of the dice roll whether or not you land on the spaces that will give them to you; you can also use an Experience card in hand to move to a space that gives you two Experience cards. The strategy, then, is to examine closely which careers offer you the best possibilities at which point in the game.
In Summary
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. The current version on the market is by Winning Moves and is pretty faithful to the original, except for some minor modernizing; they restored the earlier career paths – except for my favorite: You need to find a 1950s or 1960s edition if you want to have a game with “Uranium Prospecting in Peru”.
