вЂњItвЂ™s still an escape for me, a way to live a life where I have complete control over love, work, family and home lives. Jane has been playing for nearly 20 years now and doesnвЂ™t plan on stopping anytime soon. It was a utopia where gender, sexuality, race didnвЂ™t matter,вЂќ she tells me. вЂњI was obsessed with The Sims as it removed me from my own humdrum existence into a universe where anything was possible. In one of my favorite episodes of the podcast Reply All, a teenager creates a Sim that represents her late Grandmother, so she can interact with those memories to help manage a difficult time in her life.Д«ethany Jane, blogger at Adventure & Anxiety, agrees with the power of The Sims as a tool for self-care and self esteem. This theme of using the game as a way to cope with hardship is a common one. вЂњ gives me the power to escape for hours on end, and gives me control where I donвЂ™t in life, like relationships, work and any of lifeвЂ™s stresses.вЂќ вЂњAs a 29-year-old woman, I am happy to admit I still play The Sims ,вЂќ says content creator and podcast host Charlotte Haynes. Like many, IвЂ™m guilty of abandoning my Sims once I reached the responsibilities of adulthood, but I spoke to dozens of people in their twenties and thirties who still buy every expansion pack and delight in saying вЂSul SulвЂ™ (вЂHelloвЂ™ in Simlish) to their Sims every evening. But why did this seemingly banal simulation of real life resonate so deeply with millennials, and how does it continue to thrive today? Nearly 20 years on, The Sims is still one of the best selling video game franchises of all time.

You never completed it - you simply lived. From honing interior design skills and excelling in your career, to building the вЂњperfect familyвЂќ (or perhaps the most eccentric), the game had no end-goal, no winning.

While building avatars and virtual worlds was no unique act for kids in the late 90s and early 2000s ( Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and Second Life were all popular pastimes), The Sims was a universe that offered an unprecedented level of control alongside the unbridled joy of creativity. Falling deep into a cornucopia of expansion packs, cheat codes and modifications, The SimsВ was my daily escape from reality into a world where I could create the emo teen I dreamed to be, complete with pop punk boyfriend. At 22 years old, I am a proud member of a generation raised on life simulation megahit The Sims, and IвЂ™m not alone in feeling that the game played a monumental part in my childhood.

I love the sims