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The crypto world has attracted a number of video game industry legends, including famous developers such as Will Wright and Peter Molyneux who now develops NFT-based games, and now there’s another big name on that list: Trip Hawkins, the original founder and CEO of video game giant Electronic Arts (EA).

Hawkins was announced today as co-founder and chief strategy officer for Play for a livinga startup that develops games based around NFTs and blockchain-based tokens.

Games for a Living was co-founded by Manel Sort, formerly the first vice president at Candy Crush Saga developer King. The two gaming industry veterans previously worked together at Hawkins’ previous mobile gaming startup Digital Chocolate.

“I am confident that blockchain, combined with our vision, can create a new gaming paradigm for the benefit of all,” Hawkins said in a press release. “We plan to do it in a way that helps improve game performance and value for players, while also being fun.”

Games for a Living’s first release, Elemental Raidersis available now on Steam in a traditional free-to-play version without tokenized elements, although the publisher has previously launched promotional Ethereum NFTs linked to the game and the will drop a NFT “battle pass” in March along with its own GFAL token.

An official Elemental Raiders tournament will be held in early March with NFT and token rewards – but not in the Steam version of the game. It has also teased a second game called Diamond Dreams, which will be an NFT-powered matching puzzle game.

A Games for a Living representative told Decrypt that the GFAL token will be minted on the BNB Chain, along with most NFTs in the game. However, some NFTs will be minted on Ethereum (like the aforementioned battle pass) but will later “convert” to an NFT on BNB Chain through the company’s user portal.

The publisher’s whitepaper explains that it will eventually use its own private blockchain for games instead of an open, permissionless network that Ethereum or Solana. Games for a Living says it will establish a foundation to monitor the blockchain network and set the rules for other developers, who can deploy their own NFT-powered games on the network.

However, private (or permissioned) blockchains are seen by many crypto-builders as antithetical to the Web3 ethos, as they are not open and permissionless networks that anyone can freely build upon. In some cases, networks created by a centralized company may be gradually decentralized over time and transferred to the community, but the publisher’s whitepaper does not explicitly state these intentions.

The representative said that “at some point in the future” the company will “bridge everything to their chain.”

Hawkins was an early employee at Apple before leaving in 1982 to found Electronic Arts, which has become one of the largest video game publishers in the world. EA’s hit franchises include sports brands FIFA and Madden NFL, along with series such as Battlefield, The Sims, Need for Speed ​​and Mass Effect.

In 1991, he left his executive position at EA to found 3DO, a startup that released its own video game console that was not a commercial success. He then founded the now-defunct Digital Chocolate in 2003 and remained CEO until 2012, and has subsequently advised or served on the board of gaming, technology and esports startups in the years since.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated after publication with additional details about which blockchain networks Games for a Living will use for its games and assets.