EA founder Trip Hawkins joins web3 studio Games For A Living

Trip Hawkins, founder of gaming behemoth Electronic Arts (EA), is switching gears from protagonist roles at gaming giants to a Barcelona-based web3 game studio startup, Games For A Living (GFAL).

Hawkins will join the startup as chief strategy officer and a member of the board. He’s seen startups through every stage from working alongside Steve Jobs at Apple to helping lead EA toward its initial public offering, according to a company release.

“Trip is the father of modern video game publishing and one of the best visionaries in the games industry, to the extent that he was already talking about NFTs back in 2007 when I first met him,” said Manel Sort, CEO of GFAL. “We’re honored to have him on board to guide our strategy going forward, which I am sure will be a huge boost to our business and the future of blockchain gaming.”

Sort and Hawkins worked together at Digital Chocolate. Sort is the former FVP and head of studio at King Barcelona, which was the second-biggest studio for the global gaming company.

GFAL closed a pre-seed round in early 2020 led by Inveready and Bonsai Partners with the aim of developing games to fuel mass adoption of blockchain technologies. The startup’s first game is Elemental Raiders, a free-to-play roleplaying strategy game.

“Regardless of the recent birthing pains, blockchain as a technology holds a lot of potential, enabling enhanced experiences, verifiable proof of ownership and asset trading, as well as creating new opportunities for social interaction and innovative business models,” Hawkins said in the release. “We want to capitalize on that, not necessarily by forcing conventional gamers to hop on to the web3 express, but by adding value to the gaming models that already exist.”