William Murray Hawkins III, widely known as Trip Hawkins, recently announced his entry into the Web3 gaming industry. Hawkins, who founded the renowned gaming company Electronic Arts (EA), has taken on the role of chief strategy officer at Games for a Living, a Barcelona-based gaming startup. The startup has developed games based on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain-based tokens. According to CoinDesk, Hawkins and Manel Sort, the co-founder of Games for a Living, previously worked together at Digital Chocolate, a mobile gaming startup that Hawkins launched in 2003.

Hawkins has an extensive resume in the gaming industry. He founded EA in 1982 and also served as the Director of Strategy and Marketing at Apple Computer in the same year. In 1991, he co-founded 3DO, a video game company that eventually went bankrupt due to limitations placed by EA on 3DO’s console expansion after the introduction of the Playstation by Sony in 1994. Hawkins is credited as a major driving force behind EA Sports and the game design for John Madden Football on the OG Commodore 64. He recently shared journal entries he made 30 years ago after he returned from CES in Las Vegas on Twitter.

Hawkins expressed excitement about his new journey with Games for a Living, stating that he plans to leverage new and emerging technologies to create exciting, immersive experiences for gamers. He also expects content creators to use blockchains more frequently. Decrypt reports that Games for a Living plans to make its native GFAL token available for minting on Binance Smart Chain, along with most of its in-game NFTs, with the exception of its battle pass that will be minted on Ethereum.

Despite the aggressive litigation by regulators, the Web3 gaming industry continues to grow. Last week, Pantera Capital invested $10 million USD in Metaverse Game Worldwide Webb, and gaming franchises like Square Enix announced its partnership with Polygon to create its own native NFT art project.

With the blockchain gaming market expected to grow from $4.6 billion USD in 2022 to $65.7 billion USD by 2027, the path forward for the industry’s biggest game developers, including Square Enix, Epic Games, and EA, still leaves room for AAA game innovation that has not been imagined yet.