William Murray "Trip" Hawkins III (born December 28, 1953) is an American entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company, and Digital Chocolate.
Career
Trip Hawkins was a fan of the Strat-O-Matic Football pen and paper games. As a teenager, he started his first business by trying to create a copy of the game. He borrowed $5,000 from his father to begin the venture and advertised his game in NFL Game Programs, but the business did not succeed. Later, he received his first computer and became interested in making a digital football game. He believed this would help players avoid the complex math of the game, which was handled internally.
At Harvard University, Hawkins designed his own undergraduate major in Strategy and Applied Game Theory. In 1975, he estimated it would take seven years for home computers to become common enough to make a career in game design. In 1982, he was the director of strategy and marketing at Apple Computer before leaving to start Electronic Arts (EA), a video game publisher. Under his leadership, EA became successful for many years. He is credited with helping the games industry change from simple one-person projects to complex team efforts. One of his early successes was signing John Madden as a spokesperson and consultant for EA’s football game, which later became the popular Madden NFL series.
At the time, EA was a computer software company that did not want to follow Nintendo’s strict licensing rules. When Sega released the Genesis console, Hawkins saw an opportunity. To avoid paying licensing fees, he hired a team to study the system and create unlicensed games for it. He later told Sega about his plans and offered a partnership to compete with Nintendo. He said, “You can sue, but we did the tech fair and square and have great lawyers. So make us an official licensee. And give us a reduced rate.” Sega agreed and made EA a partner.
Hawkins remained chair of the board at EA until 1994. In 1991, he left EA to form 3DO, a video game console company. 3DO was created with several other companies, including EA. The console had custom graphics hardware and was the most powerful video game system when it was introduced in 1993. It cost $599 (about $1,400 in 2025), which was much more expensive than other systems that sold for less than $200. Sales were poor because of its high price and weak games that focused too much on full-motion videos instead of gameplay. In 1994, the arrival of the PlayStation and Saturn, which had better hardware and more support from game developers, hurt 3DO’s chances. Despite its failure, Next Generation magazine listed Hawkins in their “75 Most Important People in the Games Industry of 1995,” calling him “one of the game market’s visionaries.”
In 1996, 3DO stopped making the console and became a video game developer, creating games for the PlayStation, PC, and other systems. Hawkins remained chairman and CEO of the company and took on the role of creative director. He focused on branding and set production timelines of 6 to 9 months for games. However, this led to lower quality and poor sales. Hawkins had used company funds to help the company before, but he did not do so again. In May 2003, the company went bankrupt due to weak sales. Most of its intellectual property, including the Might and Magic franchise, was sold to Ubisoft, while Hawkins kept ownership of the 3DO console hardware and software.
In late 2003, Hawkins started a new video game development company called Digital Chocolate. The company focused on making games for handheld devices. He left his role as CEO in 2012.
In 2012, Hawkins joined the board of directors at Extreme Reality, an Israeli technology company working on motion control software that uses 2D cameras to track movement in 3D. In 2013, he became a senior advisor to Nativex, a mobile ad technology platform for games. In 2014, he joined the advisory board at Skillz, a mobile eSports platform.
His newest startup, If You Can Company, aims to teach children about social and emotional development, including lessons on compassion and anti-bullying. Their first game, “IF…,” is free to play and is designed for use in educational settings by teachers and students.
Hawkins currently lives in Santa Barbara, California, where he taught entrepreneurship and leadership at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2016 to 2019.
Honors
In 2005, Hawkins was added as the eighth member of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame.