Becoming a musician
Three jobs in one career
Every feature I add to OpenLifeSim costs something. The game already has a lot in it, so a new career has to be easy to pick up and still give you a real decision every year. The musician took me several tries.
In the current version you do three things. You write records, you go on tours, and you sign with a label or turn it down. Each one has a different price. Records cost inspiration, tours cost time, and a label wants your whole year.
Inspiration works like savings
Writing takes inspiration, and it doesn't come for free. Like in real life, it comes from ordinary things: a walk, a meal out, a book. The inspiration compounds, just like it would in real life. The result makes it quite scarce, but not impossible to gain.
It had to be scarce for another reason. When everyday life alone paid for all your records, every label deal came out almost exactly as good as never signing one.
Records are a lottery
In life you have to take risks, creating a new album and releasing it is very cheap compared to the possible outcome and while hard work increases probability of success, extreme success may be attributed only to luck. That's the philosophy I used while creating the song model.
Genres set the ceiling
Each genre has a limit on how many people will ever listen: 50,000 for niche, 500,000 for rising, 5 million for popular and 20 million for very popular.
I first tried making popular genres grow faster instead. Growth compounds, though. A genre that grew three times as fast ended up about a million times bigger over a career, and every very popular musician landed on the same number. With a ceiling, every genre has about the same floor and a very different top.
A year without a new record makes you lose 5% of your fans, so a career can fade as well as grow.
The concert dynamic billing
To make the value of popularity visible the concerts allow different prices of tickets based on the musician popularity.
Mood makes the year shorter
Your mood matters more here than anywhere else in the game. Below 30, you can't write new songs at all. A low mood also means more time in bed, so an unhappy year is a shorter one.
You can still tour, and living a little lifts your mood as well as your inspiration.
Signing pacts with a devil
After gaining some renown you will be offered a path forward. Label contracts!
But beware not to spend all your time on fulfilling it (what happened to Michael Jackson).
The short version of the rules is on the musician career page, and you can start a life in your browser.
Follow me on X