Earning simoleons have gotten more exciting now with the first official expansion released for The Sims 4. Get to Work is a pretty good expansion pack overall. Modelled after the Sims 2 Open for Business, this pack focuses on opening and running your very own business, but it does add three new careers that are active, which is new for the series, making working even more enjoyable and fun for players.

Sims have a variety of career options in the base game, but jobs fall into rabbit holes. Once you choose your Sim’s career, you have very little control over it, besides gaining skills for promotions. They’d be sent to work, and you’d have to wait for them to return home before you could play again. But with Get to Work, it takes working to the next level.

Opening a Business in ‘Get to Work’

Is your sim more of an entrepreneur, but doesn’t want to get a normal job, then this is the option for them. They then have the opportunity to open their own store and delve into the retail industry.

Unlike a regular job, your Sim will have to have a substantial amount of money to invest in their business, as opening a business is not cheap, and in the beginning, the profits are not guaranteed. Although, if the business takes off and gets successful, it can create a very lucrative income.

You and your Sim are in charge and must run the business together. Basically, you can pretty much sell anything you want, from clothes, toys, furniture, electronics, art, baked goods, plants, and everything in-between. You can also focus your attention on the structure of the building and decorating the shop’s interior, and of course setting price markups, hiring and managing employees, advertisement, and customer interactions.

One element that makes running your own business interesting, is taking a sims skill to the next level and utilizing it in the business, especially when combined with other expansion packs. Like if your sim is a painter, they can then sell their art like an art gallery. If your sim is a flower arranger, they can create a florist and sell their flower arrangements. Or if your sim is a woodworker or a fabricator, they can make a furniture store and wood crafting shop. (I personally found it fun to create a magic shop selling potions, along with other magical items like wands and brooms, making a good source of income for my spellcaster.) There are many ways you can utilize your sims skills in a business, giving you more fun and interesting ways to play with your sim.

Get to Work Active Careers

The Get to Work expansion pack includes three new active careers that allows you to follow your Sim to work and play out their workday. Daily tasks will be given for your sim to complete in order for them to advance in their career, and you’ll be able to see your sims working and doing their job.

• Detective Career
  Sims who want to protect and serve their community should pursue a Detective career. If you enjoy a good mystery, you might be interested in this career path. Your Sim begins as a cadet, and you will assist them in honing their inquisitive nature. You’ll eventually be able to investigate crime scenes, bring suspects in for questioning, and piece clues together to solve cases. And if all your hard work pays off, your Sim can be promoted all the way to chief.
• Doctor Career
  With this career, you begin as an intern and have to work your way up from an orderly, medical technician, and nurse before becoming a Doctor. Your Sim can advance from general practitioner to specialist, surgeon, and, at the top of their career, then chief of staff. Daily tasks must be performed in order to increase job performance, tasks such as mopping and cleaning beds, interacting with the medical equipment’s, diagnosing patient ailments, performing surgery and/or delivering babies.
• Scientist Career
  Doing mental challenges can be enjoyed by intellectual Sims, and with those challenges come some pretty interesting and fun rewards the higher you go. At the lower positions, your Sim will spend most of the time collecting and analyzing various items. They can learn how to make serums that can be fun for gameplay and might come in handy as well. Some inventions, like the ray gun, can transform objects and allow’s you to mind control other Sims, which is pretty interesting. Inventing and building a portal machine can also allow you to access the new alien world that comes with this pack.

Skills

Get to Work introduces two new skills for your Sims, which are available to all Sims.

• Photography
  This skill enables your Sim to buy and use nicer cameras that are better than the phone camera. allowing you to take much better photos. Along with this skill comes a photo studio set, that allows for more professional pictures to be taken, equipped with a backdrop and professional lighting. You can then sell these photos to make some money, (you can even open up a retail store to sell your pictures like a photography gallery), or just simply hang them up in your home.
• Baking
  The baking skill is much like the cooking and gourmet cooking skill, with it offering a much bigger variety of recipes focusing more on baked goods like cookies, breads, cakes, and pies. (You can even open up a retail store to sell these new baked goods like a bakery). This new skill accompanies your Sims culinary abilities quite nicely.

  

Worlds

Get to Work introduces two new worlds in this expansion pack. One easily accessible, and one hidden.

• Magnolia Promenade
  This world serves more for the retail aspect of the pack. Mainly focusing on shopping, there are no residential lots there, making it an excellent location for your Sim to start up their own shop. If you are not wanting to run a business, it can still be a fun new place to place other community lot types, like gyms or bars, for your sims to hang out.
• Sixam
  This new world serves as the homeworld for aliens, the new occult that has been introduced in this pack. This world is flagged as a hidden world, that can only be accessed through the scientist career. Your sim will need to construct the wormhole generator, which acts as a portal door to the hidden world. While visiting Sixam, be sure to collect any rare alien items you can find, and don’t forget to make new friends with the alien beings.

Occult

Aliens!?
With this expansion pack, aliens have been introduced as a new playable occult. As with the previous instalments involving aliens, abductions are a thing, which occurs at random late at night (There is a satellite dish available if you want to help your Sim avoid being abducted). Aliens are able to don a human disguise, which is editable, in order for them to blend in Sim society, so don’t be surprised if your neighbour or new friend turns out to be an extraterrestrial. For male sims, there’s a risk involved when they get abducted, for if they get abducted, there’s a chance for them to become pregnant with an alien baby. This aspect of the game can be quite fun as it can create exciting plot twists and storylines.

 

Pros and Cons of ‘Get to Work’

Pros

• The new careers are refreshing and are fun to check out.
• Going to work and controlling your sims at work.
• Running your own retail business is a lot of fun.
• Running a business can tie in well with other packs, and can make your skills more interesting.
• The photography skill is a really great addon, as it’s part of most families lives when decorating their homes with photos of their family members, weddings, holidays, children, and/or even just beautiful sites.
• The baking skill is another great skill addon, and you don’t even have to own a bakery to enjoy all the delicious baked goods. It’s a great addition to cooking in the kitchen.
• Aliens can always be quite fun, and it’s fun that they have human disguises, that it’s a mystery as to who in town is a green/blue friend. (For the first time in the sims Aliens can be playable from CAS, which is great)
• Sixam is a very interesting addition, as it’s the first time, in the sim series, that we get to visit the home of the aliens. The new world can be a lot of fun to explore, and there are very rare collectables for you to collect.
• In the active careers, you don’t have to follow your Sim to work all the time, you can just send them on their own, just like a normal rabbit hole job, which can be a nice break if you need to focus on another sim in the household. (Just know that they can’t get promoted unless they tick off certain job requirements, which can only be accomplished when you at work with them)
• Running a retail business has come with added business perks and includes advertising, which is a very nice feature.
• Having a pregnant sim be able to give birth at a hospital is really fun, giving you more closeness with your sim. And what’s nice is that you get a birth certificate, adding to your sims family collection.

Cons

• Going to work with your Sim can easily become boring quite quickly. It is exciting and fun for a while but can get a bit tedious and redundant. It’s mostly felt in the detective career, where investigations can become redundant and boring, where the tasks become the same from a certain point right up until the top of the career. As well as, when hunting for a suspect, the clues sometimes glitch out and don’t even match the sim that the game says it is, which can be highly frustrating. The crime mystery element easily gets taken away because of this, which is sad because this was the career I was most excited for.
• It’s difficult to play with more than one Sim with the active careers. You can send one Sim to work without accompanying him, but he won’t earn as much or advance as quickly without you.
• The game introduces the doctor career with a hospital, and with it comes new types of ailments, but if your Sim becomes sick, they for some reason can’t go see a doctor for treatment, and it’s always the standard base game sickness. And with that, the medicine you buy is the same standard medicine for every sickness you have. If only there were different medicines or treatments that cure the ailments differently.
• The fact that you are unable to run your business afar at home, as your business cannot function without you. Would have been nice if you could hire a manager of some sorts to manage the business while you out for lunch.
• Managing your employees in your retail business can be quite difficult.
• With the retail system, I really would have preferred to ring up customers at the cash register, just like Sims 2 did it, instead of using a random tablet standing in the middle of the aisle. And to complete it, they would be holding a shopping bag to complete the look of them having purchased something.
• The photography skill could have been fleshed out more. For example; there isn’t a lot of poses or great ways for your Sims to take pictures together, and you can’t take pictures with more than two sims. It would have been a great addon if they added a photography career along with this skill. (Although you could open a photography gallery with the retail system, but it’s not the same)
• The cupcake machine sadly feels useless in this pack, as it is so huge and bulky, which is difficult to place in ordinary homes, that my sims are never able to bake those locked items, which normally are and can be baked in your average conventional oven. (Since when does baking cupcakes need to be made in a machine)

Final Thoughts

If making money in the sims is just a means to an end for you, and you like big amounts of fast quick cash, like using money cheats and so on, so you can focus on other aspects of the game like skill gaining, storytelling, or other types of adventures, then you might want to skip out on some of the main elements of this expansion pack.

Overall, for a first expansion pack for the Sims 4, I would say it’s a pretty good one with nice addon features, and definitely has a lot packed into it. It does depend on your play style though, on whether or not one should get it. If you enjoy setting career goals, earning money in new ways, and controlling your Sims work days, then you’ll probably love this expansion pack.

For me personally, I love this expansion pack as running a business and controlling your sims workday can be very fun to play out, and can definitely add depth for your sims character, as when you’ve worked hard to start up their own business which can be passed down generations, watching it grow, can be really rewarding. And of course, it’s great for storytelling.