Yick Kai Chan was an artist who let players experience a little bit of Paris in their lives.
Yick Kai Chan was an artist who let players experience a little bit of Paris in their lives.
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Zynga remembers its fallen CityVille architect

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Yick Kai Chan was a rare person who combined his real world experience as an architect and his training as a digital artist. That experience came together at Zynga, where he worked creating iconic buildings for the social game CityVille. But Chan passed away suddenly over the weekend, leaving sadness among his friends, family and coworkers.

He is survived by his wife Diana and a 10-year-old daughter Kyra. Zynga and friends set up a GoFundMe scholarship fund for Kyra. The fund has already raised more than $42,000 to pay for the education of Kyra. Zynga made a $15,000 donation to the fund. The campaign is still open for anyone to make donations.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.