CityVille lead designer quits Zynga for Idle Games

The lead designer for Zynga’s CityVille has quit the browser games giant to join San Francisco-based startup Idle Games.

Michael McCormick, who has worked in the industry for more than 20 years at companies such as EA, Playfirst and HumaNature Studios, has joined the new social games developer as director of game design.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the industry’s biggest players on the frontiers of emerging genres and platforms,” McCormick said.

“To say that Idle Games is doing new things in the social space is an understatement, and I couldn’t be more excited to join the team.”

Idle Games CEO Jeffrey Hyman added: “When we started Idle Games our core mission was to make wholly original and truly social games driven by creativity and fun, limited only by our imaginations.

"Michael embodies these values and has a proven track record of innovation and success. Really, he’s quite a god in the gaming industry. The perfect fit for Idle Worship."

The social game developer’s first title, Idle Worship, a god game in which users build up a religion of friends and fictional ‘Mudlings’, is due to release on Facebook on March 14th.