Trip Hawkins, Godfather of Video Games, Is Reaching for a Second Life

Video games are barely old enough to have a proper sense of history. But now that companies like Activision and Nintendo are firmly (or shakily, as the case may be) established atop a multibillion dollar industry, it's always interesting to see what happens to seminal figures who eschewed the standard corporate ladder.

Just take Trip Hawkins. Back in 1982, the man founded Electronic Arts—now the third-largest video game company in the world and the force behind countless iconic games like The Sims, Battlefield, and Mass Effect. He stepped down from his role atop EA in 1991 and tried to start a few other gaming and tech companies, none of which reached the same dizzying heights.

Now, Hawkins is back again with a new goal in mind: education. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal and the San Jose Mercury News, his new venture, a startup by the name of If You Can, is planning to unveil a free education app along with an announcement that it's raised $6.5 million in a recent round of fundraising. That comes after the company raised $2.8 million in 2013 from several venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz.

If You Can's new game is developed for children between the ages of six and 12. Like any good kids game, it tells a story about magical talking dogs and cats. But this isn't just a rehashing of Swat Kats—although that would certainly be an amazing idea as well. Rather, the Journal reports that the new game is "a combination of both an educational program his children have gone through in school and the meticulously created sports simulation videogames he ushered to market after founding Electronic Arts."

Hawkins described the game in an interview with the WSJ by saying: "It’s about managing your emotions and making healthy decisions," adding that it aims to teach players about "making good choices about respectful communication."

There's a lot to be said about adjusting educational tools and methods for what The Atlantic's Hannah Rosin calls the "touch screen generation." But I find news like If You Can's interesting for a more basic reason that has to do with the evolution of games as a medium, a technology, and an art form.

Since the days of Pong and Spacewar, we've certainly learned how to make video games better. But have we really examined games themselves, and asked how they've made our lives better? Mobile games in particular have proven particularly adept at convincing their players to spend lots of money. But developers themselves fret about the compulsive behaviors that games like Candy Crush Saga and Flappy Bird can incite in their players.

It's telling, then, that when Nintendo responded to the mounting financial pressure it's facing, the company still politely refused to bring its many beloved games to smartphones. Instead, the company said that it wants to focus on new products that improve the user's "quality of life."

I don't know if Trip Hawkins is the man to usher in a new age of holistically focused video games. Or if Nintendo is the company to do so. But it's nice to see such accomplished figures in the industry thinking so critically about the nature and value of their own craft.