This is probably the hardest one to quantify, but it's something that is obvious whenever upload moderators look at an upload: have you really expended some serious time and effort on a creation? You can't just crank out a bunch of stuff in a short amount of time and expect it to be good. Nor can you spend a while just fiddling with something but not really trying and expect a good result either.

Being graced now with a full 7 EPs, there's really no excuse for careers not being EP compatible. If you're not sure, there is a tutorial for making careers EP compatible here.

Custom careers must not overwrite Maxis ones (unless they are specifically intended to be default replacements of an EA career). It's a simple rule, but may not always be obvious to beginning creators. Instructions on ensuring this are in the same tutorial as linked above.

Text is the main part of a career, as such it needs to be as close to perfect as possible. All text - job levels, job descriptions, and chance cards - must be triple checked for spelling and grammar; and must make general logical sense. Make sure you change the pronouns in male and female versions, and be careful in your use of $Me.

Unless your career is specifically meant to be unrealistic, make pay levels roughly congruent with the pay of Maxian careers. A table of the basegame career wages is available here for comparison.

Custom icons: Are required, unless you have a good reason for exception. They should meet the standards laid out in this mini-tutorial - that is; be the roughly right colour (if it's a single-colour silhouette), NOT be a random photo, and have a transparent background. You may use an EA icon if it is appropriate; the main purpose of this requirement is to ensure that the UI looks neat when your career is in use.

You must attach your career's icon, even if it is for whatever reason not custom - the icon is usually the best choice for default thumbnail, too. You may also include ingame pictures such as the carpool, uniform, a particular chance card/job description/promotion bubble: however these are not required.

For instructions on compressing your files into an archive, please see: Creator Guidelines: Creating Archive Files.

Please do not include multiple archives with the same contents - that is, please don't put your files in both a .zip as well as a .rar because some people only want .zip files - please just choose one.

Also, please do not double-compress your files... a .rar file inside another .rar file (or any other archive inside another) doesn't compress it anymore, and it makes it so we can't see the contents without downloading, and also just makes an extra step for the people downloading.

Good titles:

• Mission-Style Living-Room Set
• 10 Simmer Way (Large family home)
• Fluffy Party Dresses

Bad titles:

• My First Upload!
• Lipstick

• Information: Your upload post must tell us the following:
  • How many chance cards are complete.
  • All job titles.
  • All job descriptions.
  • All wages.
  • All work days.

The easiest way to present the last of these is something like this:

Talking Example - §200 - M, W, Th, F, Sa

Your job is simple. You sit in a wiki article, reading yourself to passers-by. This description would include brief mention of your promotion prospects; but really, from here, where can you go but up?

You should also mention which skills are required, although you don't have to give the precise skill and friend requirements for each level, if you don't want to.