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GameLook report/As one of the hottest topics in the industry recently, Metaverse has attracted the attention of multiple fields such as games, technology and investment. As the topic heats up, we see more and more teams begin to try to create different versions of Metaverse, such as Facebook’s Horizon, Sony’s Dreams Universe, and even the VR version of “Beijing East Village” created by art collectors.
However, there is an upcoming sandbox Metaverse that has attracted the attention of GameLook. The NFT (Non-Fungible Token) version of “The Sandbox” created by Pixowl, Inc. under Animoca Brands is in addition to creating and sharing. In addition, creators are also allowed to sell personally created works in the form of NFT, and do not have to share with the official “The Sandbox”.
More importantly, the content that creators bought or created in “The Sandbox” can be used not only in the game, but also in the products of many companies that cooperate with it. In short, “The Sandbox” can be summarized as a decentralized NFT version of the universe, where players can experience games, create games, and share games and monetize through their own creative content.
The three components of “The Sandbox”: creation, realization, and social
From the most basic form, “The Sandbox” is actually similar to “Minecraft” and “Roblox”. It allows all players to create and experience 3D games for free, and to use community-created games for free. Thousands of (free) voxel model making games.
For players, after the game is officially released, you can experience multiple game worlds officially preset by The Sandbox, experience different types of games, and get rewards for completing tasks to buy more props or resources; for creators In general, the Game Maker provided by “The Sandbox” allows you to create a personalized game world, and the game editor is simple and intuitive, and you can complete the operation smoothly without any code knowledge.
The Sandbox Game Maker界面
Each user has a character avatar, which can be customized to enter different game worlds to play games. Of course, we don’t explain much about the game playing part. After all, there are already many UGC platform games in the industry, which is not difficult to understand. The biggest difference of “The Sandbox” lies in game creation and realization.
In addition to the Game Maker creation game experience, “The Sandbox” also provides NFT works editor VoxEdit. To participate in the creation of VoxEdit, you must first become an official Creator Fund creator, and VoxEdit is the only way to export resources to the game market.
Types of items in the editor
What GameLook needs to explain briefly is that the Creator Fund is a US$2 million fund established by The Sandbox to encourage community creation. After registering and passing the work evaluation, you can get bonuses for each of your creations, and you can sell them after the game is released. 100% of the income of these works. The fund aims to create a resource of 10,000 voxels for the game, limited to the first 1,000 creators.
What’s more distinctive is that the resources created by VoxEdit also support attached animation (with size limitation). After the creation is completed, you can use it in your own Game Maker. Of course, after you upload the work for review, it will be replaced by NFT. Enter the market in the form of currency (you need to be familiar with the technical requirements before creating, so that the items you create are compatible with Game Maker).
The default block size of The Sandbox universe is 32*32*32, and the size of a character avatar is 2 blocks high (that is, 64 voxels).
If you are not satisfied with the created resources, you can also modify it in VoxEdit, then import it into Game Maker for debugging, and then submit it to the market until satisfactory results are achieved.
Unlike “Roblox” creators who can only get 25% of the share, in the upcoming “The Sandbox”, creators can get all the proceeds. The most important currency in the game Metaverse is $SAND (up to 30 100 million), it can be used to circulate in multiple blockchain exchanges, such as Binance.
From the perspective of monetization, if 100% of the creative revenue is given to developers, what does The Sandbox monetize through?
In fact, The Sandbox also launched land and resource transactions. $SAND is the most important instrumental token of “The Sandbox”. You can buy and sell soil and assets in the Metaverse of “The Sandbox”, and then Use creative or purchased resources to create your own game.
Players can get rewards by playing games, or they can pay for $SAND, and creators can get $SAND in the form of realizing works, and then realizing it on the blockchain exchange. As the issuer of $SAND, The Sandbox gradually distributes a limited amount of currency to Metaverse through batches (currently about 12% has been released).
In addition to playing games, creating and monetizing, another dimension of “The Sandbox” is social. All users have their own character avatars. You can customize skins, hairstyles, and even use equipment to improve attributes. Character avatars can be used to enter different games and socialize with friends or strangers.
What needs to be added is that the resources created by the creator in “The Sandbox” can also be used in a variety of games, such as the “Minecraft” that can be imported and multiple games that cooperate with it, which truly realizes the integration of multiple game worlds. interconnected.
According to The Sandbox, the game has reached IP cooperation with more than 60 brands in the digital entertainment field, such as The Smurfs, Care Bears, Atari, CryptoKitties, Shaun the Sheep and so on.
From sandbox games to NFT meta-universe: “The Sandbox” series has received 40 million downloads and 1 million MAU
I have to say that the emergence of “The Sandbox” is a long evolutionary process.
In March 2012, Pixowl, Inc. created a sandbox game called “The Sandbox” on the mobile platform, hoping to provide users with a game platform for creating pixel art. Pixowl co-founder and COO Sebastien Borget said, “I want to make a game that can form a community of players and let them create with us.”
After the game was released, it received more than 5 million U.S. dollars in revenue, and more than 5,000 new users were added every day.
In June 2016, Pixowl released the sequel “The Sandbox Evolution”, which strengthened physical simulation on the basis of the original version and expanded the horizontal world by ten times. Subsequently, as the team continued to update, the game became bigger and bigger.
In 2018, Pixowl announced that it was acquired by Animoca Brands. And this time, the team hopes to create a new version of full 3D, multiplayer, multi-platform, and use the form of NFT to create a decentralized Metaverse.
NFTs are virtual tokens created on the blockchain to realize digital scarcity, security and authenticity. They are unique, indivisible, and non-interchangeable, giving creators a true digital asset in the game. ownership. It is precisely because of this that creators and players can have truly unique ownership of the game, which is contrary to the way traditional developers create and own all the rights of the game.
According to Pixowl, the “The Sandbox” series has more than 40 million installations and more than 1 million monthly active users. In 2020, the company sold $SAND worth $20 million (12% of the total) and land plots worth $2.5 million (40% of the total map).
According to The Sandbox, the team is also preparing to bring more updates to the user experience in 2021, such as the virtual reality world, visual experience, immersion, and monetization.
With the popularity of the Metaverse concept, “The Sandbox” has also begun to be favored by more investors. For example, just last week, Animoca Brands announced that it had obtained US$88.88 million in equity financing on the basis of a valuation of US$1 billion.
This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.
