When I was growing up, the genre-defining dollhouse sim The Sims was the ultimate escape. Id build dream homes, cultivate a neighbourhood of weird and wonderful friends and live out a fantasy adult life.So when EA surprise-dropped a rerelease of The Sims 1 and 2 last weekend to celebrate the series 25th anniversary, with all expansions included (my nine-year-old selfs dream) naturally I was compelled to return to my happy place, revisiting my 10-hour pyjama-clad marathon sessions micromanaging the lives of the Newbies, Roomies, and the Goths, and occasionally removing their pool ladders when they were taking a little swim, and only taking a necessary pause for mums roast dinner.While the familiar chaos of breezy music, tragic pool accidents, and my own personal french maid delivered a powerful dose of nostalgia, there is something else lurking beneath this games quirky and cheerful exterior, something that I wasnt conscious of when I was a kid. To my surprise, the game now feels less like a chance to live out your dream life, and more like a struggle simulator. (I also forgot how much time my Sims spent playing chess.) Like a Lynchian picket-fence town, I realised, theres a darkness lurking under suburban sheen.The original Sims games were more dystopian than todays perky, brightly coloured The Sims 4. The Sims 1 instead offers a desaturated daily grind. The contrast isnt just the aesthetic 20 years ago, Sims had no dreams or ambitions. Your virtual families worked long hours for expensive lives, where death and some of the most gut-wrenching music in game history lurked behind even mundane everyday tasks.Forget personality, aspirations and tastes. The Sims 1 is a capitalist nightmare where survival trumps self-actualisation.Mind the spontaneously combusting ovens! Sims 1 + 2.I forgot how much time the original Sims actually spend working. They do boring, dull jobs for little pay, out of your sight making the simple message that you get when they are promoted (or passed over) strangely impactful. Put that meagre wage packet towards the cheapest oven on offer, and itll probably catch fire and kill you. This is a game that punishes you for being poor. It means that the rich, like the iconic Goth family, in their still-stunning graveyard-edged stone mansion stay, rich while the poor stay poor. Social mobility in The Sims 1, I learned, is near impossible.And having a social life? Forget it, at least when youre on the bottom rung of your random career ladder. Theres simply no time to make friends, something I didnt remember from my days as a Sims-obsessed tween. I now realise that my neighbourhoods messy EastEnders-level entanglements were largely scripted in my head. Instead, you must chip away at ++ and relationship scores until you can finally, anticlimactically Play in bed, thanks to the Livin it Up expansion pack that provided the worlds most basic sex education to a generation of 11-year-olds. Theres nothing dark about that expansions heart-shaped bed. I still want it in real life.Even these moments with the most meaningful loves of my Sims lives seemed to offer them nothing they were transactional, serving nothing more than to unlock new interactions. They are performing for my enjoyment, not theirs.Friendship is also bleakly transactional here: you need a certain number of them to climb the ranks at work. Stay lonely, and youll stay poor, and probably die from having a cheap, spontaneously combusting microwave. Its an especially sad existence for single Sims who live alone. Exhausted from work, if you dont find time to call your friends on the phone for hours or they decline to come over your relationships decay rapidly. Like Black Mirrors award-winning Nosedive episode, losing social credibility quickly sees things spiral quickly downhill for your Sims.And nothing flips a millennials stomach as quick as the music that heralds a terrifying, sudden burglary. Its still horrifying 25 years later, so just hope that you had the foresight to spend your meagre savings on a burglar alarm. Thats before we even get into visits from the Grim Reaper, and creepy prank calls. These unexpected callers frighten me just as much now as they did then.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionA capitalist nightmare, but still an escape Sims 1 + 2 rereleases.Perhaps my new darker perspective on the game comes from the world we live in now. Im finally living my fantasy adult life I just didnt realise it would be less lounging in gothic-mansion dream homes, and more feeling overworked, underpaid and on the verge of a spiralling breakdown. In 2025, an era of economic anxiety and burnout, the grind of The Sims feels brutal.For all its existential dread, The Sims 1 is still an escape. Sure, it presents a kind of capitalist nightmare. But, it is a capitalist nightmare you can control. No matter how hard the daily slog got, you can always type in a cheat code and wipe away financial stress with a click the ultimate fantasy. Its also weirdly accurate: just like in real life, external advantages (and cheating the system) are way more likely to lead to success than grinding away and following the rules.Yes, The Sims 1 was and remains a dystopian suburban treadmill, but it also makes room for humour. Its a world where chaos is funny, failure is temporary, and the worst tragedies could be undone with the click of a mouse.