The Sandbox, an immersive metaverse platform and a division of Animoca Brands, announced its Voxel Games program to partner with indie game developers on multiple platforms.
Through Voxel Games, The Sandbox will be expanding the boundaries of its ecosystem by partnering with renowned indie developers and studios to create widely available games in its distinctive voxel style. The Sandbox is like a variant on Minecraft, only using blockchain technology. It has been embraced mostly by individual creators and brands so far, but now The Sandbox is reaching out to professional devs at indie game studios on multiple platforms.
“Now we have over six million users with an account. We continue to announce major brands and partnerships. The latest one was last July with Attack on Titan,” said Sebastien Borget, COO of The Sandbox, in an interview with me at Devcom/Gamescom. “We have over 1,300 live experiences from like user generated content creators on the map. We distributed over 3 million SAND tokens to the creators during Builder Challenge one and two. So that’s been a key driver to increase the attractiveness for creators on The Sandbox.”
Reaching new developers
The company has more than a dozen game jams around the world to stir up more creators for the platform. Nicola Sebastiani, chief content officer and the head of the U.S., has led the development of the Voxel Games program.
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“We are starting to work with third-party developers and studios to create games that use the voxel style and content for games that are built with Unity or Unreal or other engines,” Borget said. “So it’s not just the “no code” game maker tools that we had until now on The Sandbox.”
The Sandbox’s studio partners at launch include Frag Games and The Devhouse Agency, with more to be announced in the coming months.
With this announcement, The Sandbox ecosystem is now better equipped to support more creators, Borget said. Through existing creation tools like VoxEdit and Game Maker, first-time creators have been able to build voxel-based assets, games, and experiences without any coding experience.
Thanks to the Voxel Games program, professional game studios and indie developers can now enjoy the same creative freedom to develop voxel-style games using Unity, Unreal, HTML5, or other game engines of their choice beyond The Sandbox’s no-code creation tools. These games can also be made available to play on other stores and platforms.
By inviting its partners to build voxel-style games beyond its platform, The Sandbox furthers its mission of enabling an open metaverse. This initiative marks a new era of interoperability and growth for both The Sandbox platform and its user base, Borget said.
Additionally, it offers gamers a smooth and optional bridge to Web3, without the complexity of blockchain development and onboarding. This program will further drive and support the ecosystem of creators in The Sandbox by providing them access to the wider gaming world.
Broadening to new platforms
While all the games will remain true to the platform’s focus on avatar-centric gameplay, the Voxel Games program will pursue projects across a range of devices including mobile, web, and PC, widening distribution possibilities to traditional platforms, Borget said.
The expansion beyond Web3 means that The Sandbox will keep evolving and experimenting to get its content in front of more people, Borget said.
“We come with a very different value proposition here. We don’t force people to build on a new chain and wait for the adoption of that chain,” Borget said. “The Sandbox has been amazing at abstracting the complexity of blockchain that people are owning avatars, or earning something, and they never interact with a smart contract at any point of time. And we want to keep that philosophy while broadening the spectrum of the games, the developers and the creators that we can reach out to.”
Game projects will utilize traditional game monetization mechanics including free-to-play, microtransactions, in-app purchases, and ads, while also incorporating the blockchain components of The Sandbox such as accepting its SAND utility token and its player-owned digital assets, such as avatars, LANDs, and voxel asset NFTs.
“This is an exciting opportunity to realize our vision of the metaverse, where players can acquire, own, and use their digital assets across multiple games and platforms–beyond The Sandbox,” said Borget. “Engaging with indie developers and veteran game studios brings fresh ideas or proven gameplays to the table and helps us grow the widespread adoption of Web3 through voxel-style games.”
The Voxel Games program will allow indie studios to develop games utilizing the underlying technology and game engines of their choice while being able to leverage and benefit from The Sandbox’s significant existing communities and ecosystem, including:
● 6 million+ user accounts with 4.8 million+ crypto wallets
● 25,000+ LAND token owners
● 55,000+ avatar owners, and
● 290,000+ SAND holders.
This, in turn, presents the opportunity to symbiotically increase the utility and adoption of the SAND token beyond the current The Sandbox platform, which is already a Top 10 gaming token by market capitalization according to CoinMarketCap at the time of publishing, Borget said.
The Sandbox boasts over 170,000 voxel asset owners and 1.7 million assets already created. Through the Voxel Games program, projects will gain exposure to 400+ partner brands, offering studios access to valuable intellectual property.
Existing users of The Sandbox will benefit from being able to use their assets across a new portfolio of games, reinforcing The Sandbox’s vision where players can connect their wallets and utilize their owned and branded digital assets—avatars, equipment, wearables, and more—across multiple platforms and games.
The expansion beyond Web3 means that The Sandbox will keep evolving and experimenting to get its content in front of more people, Borget said.
“We come with a very different value proposition here. We don’t force people to build on a new chain and wait for the adoption of that chain,” Borget said. “The Sandbox has been amazing at abstracting the complexity of blockchain that people are owning avatars, or earning something, and they never interact with a smart contract at any point of time. And we want to keep that philosophy while broadening the spectrum of the games, the developers and the creators that we can reach out to.”
“The games developed by external studios can leverage benefits from The Sandbox, like our user base, our IPs, the 25,000 LAND owners, or 60,000 avatar holders, to integrate those digital assets that we have in The Sandbox and give them utility as well,” said Borget. “In a way, it is broadening what The Sandbox is because the brand is strong. The vision of the open metaverse lets players use their digital assets across multiple games and platforms. It started with a “no code” game maker on The Sandbox, and it continues to expand now, starting with selected studios, into other games on all the platforms.”
He noted players can get started on the other platforms with no Web3 functionality and then connect their wallets later on if they want to engage with NFTs and SAND tokens.
“Today, we’re starting to embrace external development partners who can build games that can bridge the two worlds,” Borget said.
Sebastiani said the company has spoken to many game studios about the opportunity with the program and it has started reviewing 50 submissions. He noted two have been announced and three more are coming in the next few months. The titles include survival games, dungeon crawlers and more. That’s very different from the mash-up style content that The Sandbox has been known for, Sebastiani said.
For players, the benefits are clear.
“In the past, they could only play in experiences made on The Sandbox platform with the game maker,” said Sebastiani. “Now, as a player, I can start utilizing my Snoop Dogg avatar and other avatars to play on games on those other platforms. It can create something pretty unique, like taking my digital identity across all different games. And it also lets developers build gameplay that brings multiple IPs together.”
Borget added, ” This one of the strengths of The Sandbox. It’s very recognizable in the industry, where content is made on The Sandbox and voxel games have been popularized thanks to Minecraft. Another benefit of this program is that developers can leverage our library of 100,000 assets or so.”
