In hindsight, it seems inevitable that The Sims would be a hit. The video game franchise that gave players total dominion over the lives of their digital characters the ability to manage everything from sleeping habits to wallpaper patterns has earned EA, its publisher, over $5bn (over £3.8bn) in sales, and is currently the highest-selling PC franchise in history. But back in 2000, before its release, its creators were bracing themselves for failure.
The mastermind behind The Sims was Will Wright, a Georgia-born game designer who had made his name in 1989 with the release of SimCity. Wrights background was hardly the typical route towards game design: his most notable early achievement was winning the US Express in 1980, an illegal cross-country street race in the vein of the Cannonball Run. Wright initially struggled to find a publisher for SimCity, a non-linear city-building game that bucked the goal-oriented conventions of the medium. Determined to publish it himself, he co-founded the gaming company Maxis with Jeff Braun in 1987. 
SimCity proved a seminal game, selling nearly two million copies when it was ported to the SNES console. Other less-successful simulation games followed, such as SimFarm and SimCopter, and in 1997, Maxis was bought out by EA just in time for Wrights next big project. If SimCity let gamers play city planner, then The Sims would go one step further and let people play God.
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Many who worked at Maxis were sceptical of The Sims commercial potential. It was conceived as a game with no real objective, with an unprecedented focus on the minutiae of day-to-day life. Players would guide their characters (known as sims) through their lives, making sure they are fed, washed, entertained and employed. Internally, it was referred to by some at Maxis as the toilet game, a barbed nod to the games laughably unglamourous toilet-cleaning and bladder-emptying mechanics. At a time when games were making great strides in graphics and gameplay, inching towards a more immersive, cinematic sensibility, its easy to see why The Sims was regarded as a bad idea. Rather than drawing from Hollywood, Wright took inspiration from a classic childrens toy: the game would be, in essence, a digital dollhouse. 
Unlike a real dollhouse, however, The Sims appealed to just about everyone, adults and children alike. Wright had laid the groundwork with SimCity, which played a huge role in reshaping the perception of video games within the industry: from being a kid-focused hobby to a viable product for adults. This newly emerging demographic represented a great opportunity and The Sims was primed to seize it. Shortly after it launched, on 4 February 2000, it was obvious that the sceptics were wrong. The Sims rapidly became a best-seller, and over the next few years spawned a host of expansion packs, which added themed characters, items and features to the base game, and in 2003 it was ported to the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube consoles. Three sequels would follow, as well as high-concept spinoffs (like The Sims Medieval) and mobile versions.
Back then, gaming was also seen as a male-dominated market, a notion The Sims completely shook up. Some of the forward-thinking features most significantly the ability for sims to engage in same-sex relationships added to the games inclusive, made-for-everyone feel. Even though kids werent the sole market for the game, they still constituted a large portion of its playerbase. For parents, it was a game they knew they could buy for their children without having to worry about video game violence (a topic that had surfaced with particular intensity in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, which was perpetrated by students who played violent games). The Sims touched on matters like death, and sex, but the tone was always light and euphemistic. Its hard to imagine a game less likely to scandalise.
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1/25 One Direction form (2010)
Of Simon Cowells many contributions to civilisation see also Jedward, Susan Boyle and Piers Morgans career in America surely the most enduring will be the alliance of Harry, Niall, Louis, Zayn and the other one (sorry, hi Liamweve just remembered you). It was during the 2010 run of The X Factor that Cowell decided to assemble a Voltron-like pop behemoth out of five skinny teens slathered in Brylcreem. What followed was the 21st-century version of The Beatles, with better hair, tighter trousers and not a single memorable tune (go on, hum one we dare you).
2/25 David Fincher releases The Social Network (2010)
Im a creep, Im a weirdo” went the choral Radiohead cover in the trailer. Jesse Eisenbergs Mark Zuckerberg indeed came across rather slithery in the made-in-dramatists heaven collaboration between Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher (with Trent Reznor pitching in on the soundtrack). This account of Facebooks bro-tastic early years still stands up on its own terms. But it also foreshadows the unease we would later develop towards social media, Big Tech and, yes, the internet itself.
3/25 Ed Sheeran releases “The A-Team” (2011)
Years putting up with James Blunt and other, now forgotten, sappy sops had brought the singer-songwriter tradition to a dark and scary place. But then scruffy chap-from-down-the-street Sheeran parachuted in with his mumblecore take on Cat Stevens. He became the first troubadour to headline Wembley and is today the most streamed artist on Spotify. In his wake arrived a horde of Sons of Ed George Ezra (Ed goes on a gap year), Hozier (Ed forgoes hair-care products), Dermot Kennedy (Ed watches The Commitments too many times), James Bay (Ed refuses to take off his hat) etc. Theyre an unstoppable army and have us surrounded.
4/25 REM split (2011)
When the second biggest band of their generation (they never quite snatched the gong from U2) announced they were calling it quits, the world responded with a shrug. A decade on, REMs relevance has shrunk further (did you care about the recent reissue of Monster?). The cultural baton has passed from rock to pop and the era of the mega band is over. Today, it feels faintly surreal it was ever a thing in the first place.
5/25 The Avengers is released (2012)
Disney accountantsassemble! It was the formula that couldnt fail and yet the Avengers nonetheless succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of Marvel and its Mouse Masters (Disney having acquired Marvel in 2009 for $4.24bn). Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Hulk and Loki bounded across the screen together destined to become as iconic to this generation as Luke, Leia, ET and the Ghostbusters were to previous ones. Cinema would never be the same again to the delight of geeks everywhere and the bafflement of Martin Scorsese and many others.
6/25 Danny Boyles Olympics Opening Ceremony (2012)
How at ease with itself and its place in the world Britain seemed. It was the summer of 2012 and the Trainspotting director had fired the starter pistol on the London Olympics with a stunning, yet never vainglorious, celebration of British history and culture. A mere four years on, the Brexit referendum would see the nation tearing itself apart, the exceptionalist strain in the national psyche laid bare. In hindsight, Boyles Olympics extravaganza was a vision of a utopian Britishness that never quite existed.
7/25 Disney buys Star Wars (2012)
Having swooped in for Marvel, the Magic Kingdom turned its tractor-beam on Lucasfilm. Star Wars was duly sucked into the mothership for a bargain $2.2bn. And then cue swarming Tie-Fighter noises came a galaxy of new products. The Force Awakens (2015) was an enjoyable remix of the original Star Wars. But follow-up The Last Jedi crashed and burned having attempted to fix a franchise that wasnt broken. The next phase of Operation Conquer the Entire Universe was recently put into action with The Mandalorian, the main attraction of the new Disney+ streaming service.
8/25 House of Cards debuts (2013)
Kevin Spacey snaps a dogs neck, Robin Wright waxes chilly in glorious trouser-suits. Yes, the first episode of David Finchers Netflix thriller had its moments. But House of Cards was far bigger than itself. It was the mega-bucks franchise with which Netflix revealed to the world the sweep of its ambitions. Oceans of content would follow from retro romp Stranger Things to the (since cancelled) Marvel adaptations, including Dare-Devil and Jessica Jones, and royal rumpus The Crown. The way we watched TV would never be the same again.
9/25 The Red Wedding in Game of Thrones (2013)
Look outtheyre behind you! Actually no, theyre all around you. And now they are stabbing your pregnant wife in the belly So long Winterfell hero Robb Stark and hello Game of Thrones, cultural juggernaut. With season threes Red Wedding the penultimate episode was actually called The Rains of Castamere Game of Thrones adaptors David Benioff and DB Weiss proved themselves masters of subverting expectations. At the time, they must have felt on top of the world. After all, George RR Martin was close to finishing his second-but-last Song of Ice and Fire novel, The Winds of Winter, leaving Benioff and Weiss more than enough time to bring the show to a satisfactory end. What could possibly go wrong?
10/25 The finale of Breaking Bad (2013)
As we try to put the disastrous finale of Game of Thrones behind us, it is comforting to recall those blockbuster shows that concluded on a satisfying note. After five searing seasons, the Ballad of Walter White finished with Bryan Cranstons chemistry teacher turned meth magnate bleeding out, as his side-kick Jesse drove into the night and Badfinger blared. The perfect end to the great morality play of our age.
11/25 Frozen is released (2013)
It is a sign how we have come, and how quickly that, a mere six years ago, a sugar-frosted power ballad about learning to love the real you could be considered vaguely revolutionary, even subversive. But Let It Go, the song upon which Frozen coasted to global success, was received as something genuinely ground-breaking by minorities everywhere. Elsa embraced the ice-queen within. And outsiders and outcasts the world over stood up and sang along. It was a big gloopy gummy bear of a tune. Yet it encouraged the downtrodden to find their voice.
12/25 Taylor Swift goes pop (2014)
She was already a phenomenon but the true dawning of the age of Tay-Tay came with Shake It Off, her self-referential rumination on fame, self-esteem and finding the courage to love yourself in a world of online hate and anger. Swift was confirmed as the first pop star forged completely in the social media age.
13/25 Gamergate (2014)
The existence of a huge hidden army of trolls and extremists drumming in the deep was confirmed during this frightening online hate campaign against females in the video game industry (whether developers, journalists or simply gamers). The controversy would eventually burn itself out. Yet we had been put on notice. The internet might bring people together. It is also a breeding ground for intolerance and paranoia.
14/25 Hamilton debuts on Broadway (2015)
A musical about the constitutional underpinnings of the nascent United States, told via the medium of hip hop? It sounded like a spoof from Saturday Night Live, rather than the must-see it became. But Lin-Manuel Miranda was not throwing away his shot and Hamilton went stellar, on both sides of the Atlantic.
15/25 Love Island is rebooted (2015)
Reality TV reached middle age this decade and we looked back at early 2000s Big Brother and wondered at the innocence of it all. Enter ITVs revamp of the forgotten 2005 series Love Island. Toned singletons were locked down in a Mediterranean villa and encouraged to hook-up and break-up. Questions about the responsibility television producers owed their guinea pigs began to be asked when two former contestants died by suicide. Yet the merry-go-round spun on and indeed gathers speed as we count down to the first winter edition of the series.
16/25 David Bowies death (2016)
As T-shirt designers and cover-bands know only too well, rock stars have been passing away for decades. But until recently these deaths were tragic mishaps. The ageing process is the new heroin overdose as the classic rock generation reaches the end of the set-list. Bowie dying in 2016, just three days after the release of incredible final album, Blackstar, was the one that hit many of us hardest. Yet he was merely one among a legion that also included Leonard Cohen, Lemmy from Motorhead, Glenn Frey of the Eagles and The Falls Mark E Smith (and yes, this is the first time in recorded history that The Eagles and Mark E Smith have appeared side by side in a sentence).
17/25 JK Rowling brings back Harry Potter with The Cursed Child (2016)
Ten years ago, Harry Potter looked like yesterdays phenomenon, ready to assume its place on the dusty shelf next to Lord of the Rings and Narnia. But JK Rowling couldnt resist going back, first with this sprawling play (written by Jack Thorne from a story by Rowling) set partly inside the head of the middle-aged Harry. And then came the wildly uneven Fantastic Beasts films aka the reason Johnny Depp still has a job. Rowling had started the Quidditch match over, for good or ill.
18/25 Apple AirPods are released (2016)
Having democratised mp3 players and invented the smart-phone, Apple with its AirPods has introduced the masses to Bluetooth earbuds. The tech went immediately mainstream too. One moment you couldnt help thinking how silly those free-floating buds looked. The next you were coughing up £200 for a set of your own.
19/25 Sally Rooney publishes Conversations with Friends (2017)
Rooneys debut novel saw her hailed one of those archetypal voices of a generation. And she created even bigger tremors with follow-up Normal People (soon to be a BBC adaptation). But what her ascent really proved was that bright-eyed millennials have supplanted middle-aged white male novelists as the sages of the age. Whats Jonathan Franzen been up to lately? Were any of us even aware he published a book (Purity) as recently as 2015?
20/25 Fortnite launches (2017)
Video games used to be the new Hollywood, with top titles routinely outperforming big movies. But with Fortnite, they became the new rocknroll, surging through the blood-stream of youth culture. Where once kids worshipped pop stars and footballers, now their imagination is dominated by candy-coloured combatants jumping off cliffs and sneak stabbing one another in the virtual kidneys. Fortnite has sent an entire generation weak at the knees.
21/25 Harvey Weinstein is disgraced (2017)
Just two years on #MeToo has brought about unimaginable change, at least in the entertainment industry. And it began with a New York Times report unmasking the power-broker producer as a brutal predator. The film world was turned upside down, reputation after reputation demolished. Yet how far have the shock-waves truly travelled? #MeToo has never seriously troubled the music industry. And out in the real world, many women remain at the mercy of men like Weinstein.
22/25 Billie Eilish achieves one billion streams on Spotify without releasing an album (2018)
Fours years on from Taylor Swift and Shake It Off, pop music was about to be reinvented all over again. Influenced by Nine Inch Nails as much as by The Neptunes, Billie OConnell and her brother Finneas have pulled pop into a dark, nightmarish never-land. And we cant have enough of it. The impact is comparable to that of Nirvana on rock, when hair metal was rendered suddenly irrelevant. Poison and Mötley Crüe in this scenario are Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and their contemporaries.
23/25 Kanye West visits the White House (2018)
The Kanye psychodrama has been must-see viewing since he rushed Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs. But now came a moment for the history books as an egotistical eccentric with ludicrous dress sense met Kanye West (should that be the other way around?).
24/25 Stormzy headlines Glastonbury (2019)
Grime was already far too successful for us to entertain the idea that it came of age when Stormzy, in his Banksy stab-vest, closed Friday night at Glastonbury. But this was nonetheless a headline moment as the artist brought his state-of-the-nation lyrics and beats to the ultimate stage.
25/25 Phoebe Waller-Bridge signs a $20m deal with Amazon (2019)
Traditional television is the past, streaming the future. And in this global market-place what chance have state broadcasters such as the BBC? Not much, it was confirmed as Phoebe Waller-Bridge followed her triumphant second season of Fleabag by inking a $20m exclusivity deal with Amazon. Streaming, it was made painfully clear, is the Champions League of telly. State broadcasting is meanwhile on its way to becoming whatever they call the Vauxhall Conference nowadays.
1/25 One Direction form (2010)
Of Simon Cowells many contributions to civilisation see also Jedward, Susan Boyle and Piers Morgans career in America surely the most enduring will be the alliance of Harry, Niall, Louis, Zayn and the other one (sorry, hi Liamweve just remembered you). It was during the 2010 run of The X Factor that Cowell decided to assemble a Voltron-like pop behemoth out of five skinny teens slathered in Brylcreem. What followed was the 21st-century version of The Beatles, with better hair, tighter trousers and not a single memorable tune (go on, hum one we dare you).
2/25 David Fincher releases The Social Network (2010)
Im a creep, Im a weirdo” went the choral Radiohead cover in the trailer. Jesse Eisenbergs Mark Zuckerberg indeed came across rather slithery in the made-in-dramatists heaven collaboration between Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher (with Trent Reznor pitching in on the soundtrack). This account of Facebooks bro-tastic early years still stands up on its own terms. But it also foreshadows the unease we would later develop towards social media, Big Tech and, yes, the internet itself.
3/25 Ed Sheeran releases “The A-Team” (2011)
Years putting up with James Blunt and other, now forgotten, sappy sops had brought the singer-songwriter tradition to a dark and scary place. But then scruffy chap-from-down-the-street Sheeran parachuted in with his mumblecore take on Cat Stevens. He became the first troubadour to headline Wembley and is today the most streamed artist on Spotify. In his wake arrived a horde of Sons of Ed George Ezra (Ed goes on a gap year), Hozier (Ed forgoes hair-care products), Dermot Kennedy (Ed watches The Commitments too many times), James Bay (Ed refuses to take off his hat) etc. Theyre an unstoppable army and have us surrounded.
4/25 REM split (2011)
When the second biggest band of their generation (they never quite snatched the gong from U2) announced they were calling it quits, the world responded with a shrug. A decade on, REMs relevance has shrunk further (did you care about the recent reissue of Monster?). The cultural baton has passed from rock to pop and the era of the mega band is over. Today, it feels faintly surreal it was ever a thing in the first place.
5/25 The Avengers is released (2012)
Disney accountantsassemble! It was the formula that couldnt fail and yet the Avengers nonetheless succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of Marvel and its Mouse Masters (Disney having acquired Marvel in 2009 for $4.24bn). Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Hulk and Loki bounded across the screen together destined to become as iconic to this generation as Luke, Leia, ET and the Ghostbusters were to previous ones. Cinema would never be the same again to the delight of geeks everywhere and the bafflement of Martin Scorsese and many others.
6/25 Danny Boyles Olympics Opening Ceremony (2012)
How at ease with itself and its place in the world Britain seemed. It was the summer of 2012 and the Trainspotting director had fired the starter pistol on the London Olympics with a stunning, yet never vainglorious, celebration of British history and culture. A mere four years on, the Brexit referendum would see the nation tearing itself apart, the exceptionalist strain in the national psyche laid bare. In hindsight, Boyles Olympics extravaganza was a vision of a utopian Britishness that never quite existed.
7/25 Disney buys Star Wars (2012)
Having swooped in for Marvel, the Magic Kingdom turned its tractor-beam on Lucasfilm. Star Wars was duly sucked into the mothership for a bargain $2.2bn. And then cue swarming Tie-Fighter noises came a galaxy of new products. The Force Awakens (2015) was an enjoyable remix of the original Star Wars. But follow-up The Last Jedi crashed and burned having attempted to fix a franchise that wasnt broken. The next phase of Operation Conquer the Entire Universe was recently put into action with The Mandalorian, the main attraction of the new Disney+ streaming service.
8/25 House of Cards debuts (2013)
Kevin Spacey snaps a dogs neck, Robin Wright waxes chilly in glorious trouser-suits. Yes, the first episode of David Finchers Netflix thriller had its moments. But House of Cards was far bigger than itself. It was the mega-bucks franchise with which Netflix revealed to the world the sweep of its ambitions. Oceans of content would follow from retro romp Stranger Things to the (since cancelled) Marvel adaptations, including Dare-Devil and Jessica Jones, and royal rumpus The Crown. The way we watched TV would never be the same again.
9/25 The Red Wedding in Game of Thrones (2013)
Look outtheyre behind you! Actually no, theyre all around you. And now they are stabbing your pregnant wife in the belly So long Winterfell hero Robb Stark and hello Game of Thrones, cultural juggernaut. With season threes Red Wedding the penultimate episode was actually called The Rains of Castamere Game of Thrones adaptors David Benioff and DB Weiss proved themselves masters of subverting expectations. At the time, they must have felt on top of the world. After all, George RR Martin was close to finishing his second-but-last Song of Ice and Fire novel, The Winds of Winter, leaving Benioff and Weiss more than enough time to bring the show to a satisfactory end. What could possibly go wrong?
10/25 The finale of Breaking Bad (2013)
As we try to put the disastrous finale of Game of Thrones behind us, it is comforting to recall those blockbuster shows that concluded on a satisfying note. After five searing seasons, the Ballad of Walter White finished with Bryan Cranstons chemistry teacher turned meth magnate bleeding out, as his side-kick Jesse drove into the night and Badfinger blared. The perfect end to the great morality play of our age.
11/25 Frozen is released (2013)
It is a sign how we have come, and how quickly that, a mere six years ago, a sugar-frosted power ballad about learning to love the real you could be considered vaguely revolutionary, even subversive. But Let It Go, the song upon which Frozen coasted to global success, was received as something genuinely ground-breaking by minorities everywhere. Elsa embraced the ice-queen within. And outsiders and outcasts the world over stood up and sang along. It was a big gloopy gummy bear of a tune. Yet it encouraged the downtrodden to find their voice.
12/25 Taylor Swift goes pop (2014)
She was already a phenomenon but the true dawning of the age of Tay-Tay came with Shake It Off, her self-referential rumination on fame, self-esteem and finding the courage to love yourself in a world of online hate and anger. Swift was confirmed as the first pop star forged completely in the social media age.
13/25 Gamergate (2014)
The existence of a huge hidden army of trolls and extremists drumming in the deep was confirmed during this frightening online hate campaign against females in the video game industry (whether developers, journalists or simply gamers). The controversy would eventually burn itself out. Yet we had been put on notice. The internet might bring people together. It is also a breeding ground for intolerance and paranoia.
14/25 Hamilton debuts on Broadway (2015)
A musical about the constitutional underpinnings of the nascent United States, told via the medium of hip hop? It sounded like a spoof from Saturday Night Live, rather than the must-see it became. But Lin-Manuel Miranda was not throwing away his shot and Hamilton went stellar, on both sides of the Atlantic.
15/25 Love Island is rebooted (2015)
Reality TV reached middle age this decade and we looked back at early 2000s Big Brother and wondered at the innocence of it all. Enter ITVs revamp of the forgotten 2005 series Love Island. Toned singletons were locked down in a Mediterranean villa and encouraged to hook-up and break-up. Questions about the responsibility television producers owed their guinea pigs began to be asked when two former contestants died by suicide. Yet the merry-go-round spun on and indeed gathers speed as we count down to the first winter edition of the series.
16/25 David Bowies death (2016)
As T-shirt designers and cover-bands know only too well, rock stars have been passing away for decades. But until recently these deaths were tragic mishaps. The ageing process is the new heroin overdose as the classic rock generation reaches the end of the set-list. Bowie dying in 2016, just three days after the release of incredible final album, Blackstar, was the one that hit many of us hardest. Yet he was merely one among a legion that also included Leonard Cohen, Lemmy from Motorhead, Glenn Frey of the Eagles and The Falls Mark E Smith (and yes, this is the first time in recorded history that The Eagles and Mark E Smith have appeared side by side in a sentence).
17/25 JK Rowling brings back Harry Potter with The Cursed Child (2016)
Ten years ago, Harry Potter looked like yesterdays phenomenon, ready to assume its place on the dusty shelf next to Lord of the Rings and Narnia. But JK Rowling couldnt resist going back, first with this sprawling play (written by Jack Thorne from a story by Rowling) set partly inside the head of the middle-aged Harry. And then came the wildly uneven Fantastic Beasts films aka the reason Johnny Depp still has a job. Rowling had started the Quidditch match over, for good or ill.
18/25 Apple AirPods are released (2016)
Having democratised mp3 players and invented the smart-phone, Apple with its AirPods has introduced the masses to Bluetooth earbuds. The tech went immediately mainstream too. One moment you couldnt help thinking how silly those free-floating buds looked. The next you were coughing up £200 for a set of your own.
19/25 Sally Rooney publishes Conversations with Friends (2017)
Rooneys debut novel saw her hailed one of those archetypal voices of a generation. And she created even bigger tremors with follow-up Normal People (soon to be a BBC adaptation). But what her ascent really proved was that bright-eyed millennials have supplanted middle-aged white male novelists as the sages of the age. Whats Jonathan Franzen been up to lately? Were any of us even aware he published a book (Purity) as recently as 2015?
20/25 Fortnite launches (2017)
Video games used to be the new Hollywood, with top titles routinely outperforming big movies. But with Fortnite, they became the new rocknroll, surging through the blood-stream of youth culture. Where once kids worshipped pop stars and footballers, now their imagination is dominated by candy-coloured combatants jumping off cliffs and sneak stabbing one another in the virtual kidneys. Fortnite has sent an entire generation weak at the knees.
21/25 Harvey Weinstein is disgraced (2017)
Just two years on #MeToo has brought about unimaginable change, at least in the entertainment industry. And it began with a New York Times report unmasking the power-broker producer as a brutal predator. The film world was turned upside down, reputation after reputation demolished. Yet how far have the shock-waves truly travelled? #MeToo has never seriously troubled the music industry. And out in the real world, many women remain at the mercy of men like Weinstein.
22/25 Billie Eilish achieves one billion streams on Spotify without releasing an album (2018)
Fours years on from Taylor Swift and Shake It Off, pop music was about to be reinvented all over again. Influenced by Nine Inch Nails as much as by The Neptunes, Billie OConnell and her brother Finneas have pulled pop into a dark, nightmarish never-land. And we cant have enough of it. The impact is comparable to that of Nirvana on rock, when hair metal was rendered suddenly irrelevant. Poison and Mötley Crüe in this scenario are Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and their contemporaries.
23/25 Kanye West visits the White House (2018)
The Kanye psychodrama has been must-see viewing since he rushed Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs. But now came a moment for the history books as an egotistical eccentric with ludicrous dress sense met Kanye West (should that be the other way around?).
24/25 Stormzy headlines Glastonbury (2019)
Grime was already far too successful for us to entertain the idea that it came of age when Stormzy, in his Banksy stab-vest, closed Friday night at Glastonbury. But this was nonetheless a headline moment as the artist brought his state-of-the-nation lyrics and beats to the ultimate stage.
25/25 Phoebe Waller-Bridge signs a $20m deal with Amazon (2019)
Traditional television is the past, streaming the future. And in this global market-place what chance have state broadcasters such as the BBC? Not much, it was confirmed as Phoebe Waller-Bridge followed her triumphant second season of Fleabag by inking a $20m exclusivity deal with Amazon. Streaming, it was made painfully clear, is the Champions League of telly. State broadcasting is meanwhile on its way to becoming whatever they call the Vauxhall Conference nowadays.
Another group that The Sims managed to win over the elusive demographic essential in elevating a game from modest hit to total sensation is non-gamers. The Sims made itself a go-to choice for people who never normally play video games. It practically encouraged the use of cheat codes, a leniency that opened up the games full possibilities without the need for any pre-existing aptitude. Inputting rosebud (a playful nod to Citizen Kane) to the cheat bar, for example, gave the players immediate injections of cash. If you wanted to scrimp and organise, build their sims lives with the challenge of a budget, you could. But for anyone who wanted to, the option was there to just sit back and take it easy.
Another reason The Sims is still so popular after all these years is its sizable modding community. Modding adding to or altering the games code to insert new elements or features had been popular since Doom in 1993, and people found the Sims games rich with possibilities. For some, this just means creating more realistic faces, or custom tattoos, or Game of Thrones-themed furniture. For others, this can mean a more radical renovation of the gameplay, with some of the more risqué mods for Sims 4 adding features like illegal drug-use and pornographic sex animations. 
Not so mundane anymore: The Sims: Medieval was one of several themed spin-offs
Twenty years have passed since The Sims was first released, and the world of video games now looks vastly different. But not all that much has changed for The Sims. The graphics have improved, although The Sims 4, the franchises current iteration, looks pretty cartoonish and run-of-the-mill when compared to what else is out there. The basic Sims interface has grown increasingly complex, giving users a greater selection of careers, hobbies, interests, speech interactions, you name it. But its never altered the feel of the gameplay.
Thankfully, The Sims 4 has remained true to the progressive spirit of the original, and has continued to move forward: for the first time, it allows players to create transgender sims, with separate, individually alterable options for gender, voice pitch, bathroom use and whether or not a sim can become pregnant. It is still far from perfect there is no recognition of non-binary gender identities, for instance, or of people with disabilities but the significance of such a high-profile game being trans-inclusive can hardly be understated. There is no analogue in the world of cinema; it is depressingly inconceivable to imagine, say, a Fast & Furious film where queer characters are given equal footing as straight, cisgendered ones. The Sims offers hope that this will not always be the case.
For all that it tries to simulate real life, there is something oddly inhuman about The Sims. In boiling down every idle pastime to a quantifiable skill value, every social interaction to a little social metre boost, the games never really probe what it means to be alive. But then, maybe this is part of the magic. The Sims is a fantasy of control; it allows us to imagine an ordered world where wealth and happiness are just a few clicks from God’s finger away. With the real world so often consumed by chaos and frustration, you could hardly ask for a better escape.