Tim LeTourneau, one of the creators of The Sims franchise at Maxis and a game creator at Zynga, has passed away.
LeTourneau’s wife Donna acknowledged the passing on social media, and a Reddit post from a member of the Maxis team said they were “shocked and devastated to hear that we lost Tim LeTourneau this weekend.”
LeTourneau was a producer and executive producer at Maxis and a primary contributor to many games including The Sims, The Sims 2, My Sims and other titles for Maxis and Zynga.
Among his credits were SimCity 3000 (1999), The Sims (2000), The Sims 2 (2004), MySims (2007), and FarmVille 2 (2012). Those games were enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people.
I interviewed him in 2010, on the 10th anniversary of The Sims, which was conceived by Will Wright. Of that, Letourneau said, “A lot of the creative team has moved up. I went from a producer/designer to a general manager of the studio. Many of us were there from the beginning. A lot of the original Sims talent is still there in the studio. It was Will’s brainchild. But Will is the first to point out that The Sims is a collaborative effort. Women designers such as Claire Curtain and Roxy Wolosenko had a very big impact on the game. It was a result of a very creative team. A lot of that team is still here. Will is not involved anymore, but the spirit of collaborative development is how we make the game.”
LeTourneau eventually left EA’s Maxis studio and joined Zynga in time for the launch of FarmVille 2. He worked at Zynga from 2012 to 2014. And after that, he went on to design games at Storm8 for about a year. Then he rejoined Zynga for another year. He also worked at Warner Bros. Games and Fortis Games in recent years.
Sadly I’ve known quite a few people from the game industry who have passed away recently, including Gordon Mah Ung, Thomas Lee, Pete Billington, Carter Lipscomb and more. Industry veteran Don Daglow keeps a list here. I’d like to pass along my condolences to LeTourneau’s family. And to his friends, please send me stories about LeTourneau.
