Trip Hawkins has raised $6.5 million in funding for If You Can, his new startup that fuses social and emotional education and gaming.
Trip Hawkins, creator of If You Can, urged game developers to do good. He is making games that teach kids social and emotional intelligence.
The company’s first iPad game, If…, is now available in the form of a free first chapter on the Apple iTunes App Store. If… is an ambitious attempt to use gameplay to teach children skills in social and emotional learning (SEL) such as how to deal with bullies. If it succeeds, Hawkins said he will consider it a bigger accomplishment than creating blockbuster Madden NFL Football franchise years ago when he was at Electronic Arts, the massive video game publisher that he founded.
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Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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