The Career Game Loop

19How Gamers Job Craft

19.1 Don't Bring Rum to Work

Edward Kenway was a privateer—a naval soldier for hire. It was a good job. It served him well. But eventually he hit the max salary for his field, and he felt it was time for a change. So he did what any career looper would do. He reevaluated his Professional Pathfinder. He asked where he could earn a sustainable income (on the high seas), what he felt most passionately about (adventure and violence), what skills he could master (adventure and violence), and what mission drove him through life (adventure and violence). Then he followed that gravitational pull toward a new profession. He became a pirate.

Eventually, a chance encounter would throw his career for another loop. He'd end up skewering a professional assassin on the end of a rapier. He'd steal that assassin's robes and join his secret order. Next thing he knew, Edward Kenway would find himself in yet another new profession.

That's how job crafting works in Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. You loot the uniform off a dead serial killer and steal his identity. This was probably a great grow-on-the-job strategy back in the 1700s, when the game is set, but it won't work quite as well today. Today, job crafting requires more intention, more strategy, and an ounce or two less murder.

Broadly speaking, modern job crafting follows a three-step process:

1. We choose professional paths to pursue.
2. We choose methods for leveling up.
3. We tell new job stories.

Each of these steps corresponds, ...