Home comforts: how The Sims let millennials live out a distant dream

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.