Today’s young people are flocking to an egalitarian utopia where home ownership is available to all. There’s just one catch…

One of the first decisions you make in The Sims is which house to buy. The 200m-selling life simulation series, which turns 20 this week, gives every player 20,000 simoleons, the game’s virtual currency, and they can use it to purchase anything from a ready-made four-bedroom townhouse to an empty plot of land on which to construct a dream pad from scratch. In this world, renting literally isn’t an option.

For a generation of fans, that stands in stark contrast to real life. The Resolution Foundation, a housing thinktank, reported in 2018 that up to a third of millennials will rent for their whole lives, and the number of households privately renting in England rose by 121% in the 10 years after 1996, according to the most recent Labour Force Survey. With young people disproportionately more likely to rent than older generations, many have turned to The Sims to decorate a house that feels like their own.

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“Renting means your aesthetics are limited to pieces you can easily take with you and not bigger things like fixtures on the walls, window styles and paint jobs,” says 29-year-old Hadley Howlane, who lives with their parents, a grandparent and a brother.

“We also didn’t want to do anything major in case the landlord raised any complaints,” they explain. Howlane has found an outlet in The Sims, where the dream house they’ve built is a modest two-bedroom place with a reasonably sized kitchen and room for some gym equipment. The modesty is touching, and somewhat sad – in real life, it’s nothing more than a pipe dream.

Rhiannon Williams, 23, has lived in four rented homes over the past five years, all shared. “If I didn’t have others – especially a landlord – sharing the decision making, I could try things out and change the space more often,” she explains. “The Sims is definitely a medium I use to build those fantasies, and it’s perfect for the flexibility aspect because it’s so easy to make changes. I can try out a new sofa in moments rather than having two months of emails with my landlord to get approval!”

Williams also craves stability, and a home where she can create long-term design plans. “I think my real-life housing situation has affected how I play The Sims,” she continues. “I love the ability to create places that are always there to go back to, and that I can design and change to my heart’s content.”

According to Roxy Wolosenko, a designer on the original game, that’s what the game’s creator, Will Wright, wanted to facilitate. “He was really interested in exploring how people felt in different kinds of spaces, and what makes people feel comfortable,” she says. The inspiration for the game was the architect and theorist Christopher Alexander, whose 1977 book A Pattern Language sought to teach people the fundaments of home design in an accessible way.

For two decades The Sims has offered the joy of design, without the risk of angering a housemate or, worse, a landlord. The game presents a utopian world of home ownership, where everybody starts out with the same opportunities and can progress from a single-bedroom apartment to a vast palatial mansion as long as they put in the effort. It’s no wonder fans have drawn considerable comfort from building homes that truly feel theirs – even if it is just a fantasy.