In the old Euro Truck Simulator, the player/driver has at all times been basically self-employed, owner-operator one-man company. In GTS and UKTS, there was a stage when the player was forced by the game to work as an employee for some time, but later this changed completely as the player has started his own company. In some of our older 18 Wheels of Steel games, you may remember that we even had three evolutionary stages as the player progressed "from rags to riches" (quiz for veterans, was it Across America or Pedal to the Metal?), and we also tried a different approach where the main menu of the game would give the player the choice of either campaign game or a quick-game with just one arbitrary delivery.
All this was done as SCS Software was trying to satisfy the various types of players of the games - the older players want as deep simulation of every aspect of a trucker's life as possible, but the younger players often just look for a quick-to-get-into driving experience involving big vehicles, they don't want to worry about managing a company and wait hours and hours to see it grow.
In Euro Truck Simulator 2, they would like to pick and combine the best of all these approaches and give the player more freedom of choosing his or her playing style without artificially breaking up the game into any separate stages or separate play modes.
So at all times, you will always have the choice of getting hired for a wage and sit behind the steering wheels of somebody else's truck (equivalent of employee stage or a quick job), but also - once you start building your own truck fleet - drive your own truck and offer full logistics services. You can switch between the two freely: you may already have a nice small company going, but why not break the monotony when an interesting offer comes for a one-time job, especially if they are offering special conditions for an expert help, or driving an exciting tractor that you yourself still haven't managed to afford?
This kind of freedom of choice should accommodate different play styles in the same framework of how the virtual world is functioning, and give the player satisfaction of progress. For somebody who never bothers to worry about starting his company, he can just hop from job to job, and still see progress - as next to his wage he would gain XP points to help his personal growth. For somebody who is keen to start building a trucking empire as soon as possible, he can get a bank loan early on and never look back to working for somebody else.
