The Sims At 20: You Don't Know It, But It Ruined Your Life

Cheating is one of the best things about gaming. The really good ones become a mantra, a series of thumb-twitches you could probably still feel your way to right now.

The all-purpose Konami code: Up–up–down–down–left–right–left–right–B–A–start. The all-fouls-allowed cheat from Fifa 99: L1–L2–R1–R2–circle–X–square–triangle–start–select. And best of all, the one for The Sims that gave you infinite money: Control–shift–C, Rosebud;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!.

The Sims is 20 years old today, but the first rush of that godlike feeling only feels like yesterday. And I don't mean the Old Testament godlike feeling of ritualistically murdering your Sims. The second question after, "Did you play The Sims?" is always: "Did you murder them?" Making your Sim swim in their pool before taking away the ladder so they can't get out and swim and swim and swim until they eventually drown is our generation's What's The Deal With Airline Food. We're not here to talk about that. We had the chance to kill, so we did. There aren't enough cells to hold us all. It's fine.

No, there's something that still twinges two decades on. The Sims formed something latent in the psyche of a lot of people who are now between 25 and 35, something plugged way, way down past the amygdalae, deep among the neural weeds.

While it was fun to try and make the most comically hideous specimens possible, The Sims wasn't really about your Sims. The Sims was a domestic wish fulfilment machine that gave you the tools to build a mega-mansion which, on some level, you vaguely hoped you'd be able to live in a rough approximation of. I'm not sure we ever really got over it. At least with Lego or a doll's house you'd have to gradually buy bits and pieces to add on. Once you had 'rosebud' in The Sims, though, there was no limit.

Will Wright, the game's creator, came up with the idea after he'd lost his own home in the 1991 Oakland firestorm and had to buy everything he'd ever owned all over again. The whole game mechanic is a satire on consumer capitalism. You can't win it: all you can do is make sure those dithering polygons don't piss themselves too often while you're busy building yourself the house of your dreams. You flog these little avatars half to death so you can afford a basketball hoop or whatever, and inevitably they get bored or hungry and numbed to the thrills of the basketball hoop.

So you buy the next thing, and the next thing, and the next, forever. The cheat codes you wanted weren't to make your Sims happy – they were for infinite money, so you could build the games chalet which remained frustratingly out of budget for many 10-year-olds.

But how do you follow up an extended joke about the vapidity of consumerism which has sold millions of copies? You double down and make another one for people to buy. Hilarious. The great thing about this joke is the more spin-offs, sequels, expansion packs and DLCs you turn out for people to buy, the more deliciously ironic it gets. By the time the The Sims 3: Katy Perry's Sweet Treats expansion pack landed, Wright was presumably splayed across his office floor, frantically gulping air between cackles.

It's left a mark on people who were kids when they played it, though. Now, I'm not saying that it's the single reason that right now young people are half as likely to own their own home than the generation before them, but somewhere deep down I know I once thought I'd probably end up living in my own house with at least one pinball machine in every room.

Currently, I've got zero pinball machines. And even now, that deeply buried yearning for loads of pinball machines flares up every time I see a high school friend's Insta post of a front door, clock the keys emoji in the caption, and reflexively hate them for a few minutes. How many pinball machines can you fit in that semi? 15? 20? You absolute bastard.

It's not fair, but I do. I'm not alone either: in terms of raw participation numbers, furiously quote-tweeting money diaries and features about young property ladder-climbers is the UK's fastest growing sport.

If you're fortunate enough to be able to buy a house anywhere in the country, your renting mates will congratulate you while privately seething. If you buy anywhere near London, your renting mates will say something like, "oh wow," and later tell your other mates that they hope your flat in Mitcham turns out to be entirely made of artfully painted asbestos and eventually collapses into recently discovered mine workings.

It's nothing personal. But The Sims managed to take the piss out of the get-job-get-partner-get-house-fill-house-with-pinball-machines pathway so subtly that we didn't realise it until it was too late.