NBA Jam Creator Turmell Leaves EA Sports For Zynga

NBA Jam, Smash TV and NFL Blitz creator Mark Turmell has left EA Sports to join social games company Zynga. Turmell joined EA's Tiburon studio last year as its senior director. As reported by games blog Kotaku, he has now been hired by Zynga, the popular Farmville creator. A spokesperson for EA Sports said, "We appreciate Mark's contribution to Tiburon and EA Sports and wish him well in future endeavors." His departure follows a number of other EA Tiburon executives also leaving the company earlier this year. Phil Frazier, EA Sports' executive producer for the Madden NFL titles, left the company last month. Earlier this year, Madden 12 creative director Ian Cummings also left the company, to form a new Florida-based online games developer called Row Sham Bow. EA has also already seen a couple of its executives move to Zynga. John Schappert, chief operating officer at Electronic Arts, left the company back in April to move to the social games giant, while executive Steven Chiang moved to Zynga last year.