Tim LeTourneau, one of many creators of The Sims franchise at Maxis and a recreation creator at Zynga, has handed away.
LeTourneau’s spouse Donna acknowledged the passing on social media, and a Reddit submit from a member of the Maxis workforce mentioned they had been “shocked and devastated to listen to that we misplaced Tim LeTourneau this weekend.”
LeTourneau was a producer and government producer at Maxis and a major contributor to many video games together with The Sims, The Sims 2, My Sims and different titles for Maxis and Zynga.
Amongst his credit had been SimCity 3000 (1999), The Sims (2000), The Sims 2 (2004), MySims (2007), and FarmVille 2 (2012). These video games had been loved by lots of of tens of millions of individuals.
I interviewed him in 2010, on the tenth anniversary of The Sims, which was conceived by Will Wright. Of that, Letourneau mentioned, “A whole lot of the inventive workforce has moved up. I went from a producer/designer to a basic supervisor of the studio. Many people had been there from the start. A whole lot of the unique Sims expertise continues to be there within the studio. It was Will’s brainchild. However Will is the primary to level out that The Sims is a collaborative effort. Girls designers akin to Claire Curtain and Roxy Wolosenko had a really huge affect on the sport. It was a results of a really inventive workforce. A whole lot of that workforce continues to be right here. Will is just not concerned anymore, however the spirit of collaborative improvement is how we make the sport.”
LeTourneau ultimately left EA’s Maxis studio and joined Zynga in time for the launch of FarmVille 2. He labored at Zynga from 2012 to 2014. And after that, he went on to design video games at Storm8 for a few yr. Then he rejoined Zynga for an additional yr. He additionally labored at Warner Bros. Video games and Fortis Video games in recent times.
Sadly I’ve identified fairly a couple of folks from the sport trade who’ve handed away not too long ago, together with Gordon Mah Ung, Thomas Lee, Pete Billington, Carter Lipscomb and extra. Trade veteran Don Daglow retains a listing right here. I’d wish to cross alongside my condolences to LeTourneau’s household. And to his buddies, please ship me tales about LeTourneau.
