The Sims co-creator Tim LeTourneau passes away

TIM LETOURNEAUOne of the creators of the Sims franchise at Maxis and a game designer at Zynga, died.

The wife of Letourneau, Donna, recognized the passage on social networks and a Reddit post of a member From the Maxis team said they were “shocked and devastated to learn that we lost Tim Letourneau this weekend”.

Letourneau was producer and executive producer at Maxis and a main contributor to many games, including Sims, Sims 2, My Sims and other titles for Maxis and Zynga.

Among its credits were Simcity 3000 (1999), Les Sims (2000), Sims 2 (2004), Mysims (2007) and Farmville 2 (2012). These games were appreciated by hundreds of millions of people.

I interviewed him in 2010, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Sims, which was designed by Will Wright. From this, Letourneau said: “A large part of the creative team has mounted. I went from a producer / designer to a managing director of the studio. Many of us have been there from the start. Many original Sims talents are still there in the studio. It was an original idea of ​​Will. It was the result of a very creative team.

Letourneau finally left the Maxis studio of EA and joined Zynga in time for the launch of Farmville 2. He worked at Zynga from 2012 to 2014. And after that, he continued to design games in Storm8 for about a year. Then he joined Zynga for another year. He also worked at Warner Bros. Games. And at Fortis Games in recent years.

Unfortunately, I have known not many people from the game industry who died recently, notably Gordon Mah Ung, Thomas Lee, Pete Billington, Carter Lipscomb and more. Industry veteran Don Daglow keeps a list here. I would like to condole my condolences to the Letourneau family. And to his friends, send me stories about Letourneau.