How to play The Sandbox Season 3

Dive into the most successful open metaverse

Sandbox is a virtual world powered by the Polygon blockchain where you can create, experiment and play with 3D voxel assets. The game allows for full asset ownership and monetization through its integrated marketplace. We were lucky enough to play the Alpha version of the game, and here are our impressions and insights into this famous but ever-expanding virtual world.

This article was written by Nicola Fraccaroli and Unbound.

Key takeaways

• The Sandbox is an immersive digital world that also serves as a creation platform where users can play, create, own and monetize their game assets and experiences.
• The game is currently in Alpha, but already has 4 million unique players and partnerships with 400 major brands such as Adidas, The Walking Dead, Atari, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, and Rabbids.
• The game uses blockchain technology to reward players, creators and artists for their efforts and time on the platform, and to extend the gaming experience to external games and brands. It also represents a use case for digital real estate ownership and transactions.

What is the Sandbox?

The Sandbox is best known for its two best-selling mobile games, Sandbox (2011) and Sandbox Evolution (2016), which have generated a combined 40 million downloads on iOS and Android.

In the simplest sense, The Sandbox is a metaspace, a virtual gamified world where players can move their avatars around the map, complete quests, meet other players (or celebrities), and enjoy stark pixelated graphics.

NFTs enable ownership in The Sandbox

The ground you play on, the objects you interact with, the items you buy in the game marketplace, and the quests you perform in each area are created, owned, and even sold by other players. The digital economy is made possible through the implementation of NFTs.

The sandbox is actually designed as a community-driven metaspace, or as COO Sebastien Borget calls it, “an open metaspace platform”.

The more quality game assets (gear, experience, missions) you create and the more missions you complete, the more you are rewarded by other players or developers.

User-generated content and ownership fuel The Sandbox

The current player-driven model evolved from the old mobile experience of The Sandbox, which did not allow active players and creators to be rewarded for their efforts to create their own metaspace experiences due to the limitations offered by the app store.

Combining user-generated content with ownership and true monetization was the turning point for this title, a leap of faith and vision that has made The Sandbox a unique adventure with 4 million users and 400 major partners to date.

What does The Sandbox look like?

The game map now extends to 15,000 virtual square kilometers, making it the largest meta-space real estate in existence.

It is made up of either large, small or huge squares (166,464 lands in total), each of which is available for players to play, buy or rent. Each of these squares is referred to as a “land”.

The map and the LAND

The game map now extends to 15,000 virtual square kilometers, making it the largest metaspace real estate in existence. It consists of either large or small or huge squares (166,464 lands in total), each of which can be played, purchased or rented out by the player. Each of these squares is called a “land”.

You’ll recognize very familiar symbols that belong to their respective LAND. each brand there is building its own experience, quests, perks and shows. Players can decide which one to start with based on affinity, or enter one of the many portals to join a “stand-alone” experience.

What experiences can you find in The Sandbox?

In each play area (experience), the environment you will enter is very different. We found ourselves jumping on floating piano keys, running through the BAYC museum, lazing in the salon in Far West, and waiting for our daily adventure until 1pm in a glittering music club.

The different lands also brought very different experiences. During our playthrough, we played very different puzzles and missions (find, kill, solve, visit) every 45 minutes or so. This dynamism makes the game engaging, although not everyone will be comfortable with the sharp and pixelated (voxel) graphics at the start.

Also, given that many of the experiences and tasks may not have been done by professional game developers, expect some of them to be harder than expected or not entirely well thought out.

How do you climb up the game leaderboard?

The more and faster you complete missions in each region, the higher you will be on the game leaderboard, which rewards the best performers with $SAND (in-game currency) to buy game assets, customize your avatar, or play specific experiences.

It is worth noting that the missions in each area must all be completed within one game session. Otherwise, you will have to restart them, and you can replay them to rank on the leaderboard (verified by your account).

Also, all missions we tried out on the sandbox were free, but individual creators were allowed to place a “paywall” to be able to play on their land.

How can gamers create ASSETs in The Sandbox?

Of course, the biggest added value for you as a gamer is the creator part. Each player can create their own in-game assets: avatars, items and cosmetics that can be purchased by other players and used in the game.

Voxel-based graphics and tools allow for a codeless building experience, enabling even junior creators to contribute and monetize their efforts. In this sense, the sandbox not only embraces the creator economy, but also spreads the revenue from it.

It rewards creators and brands that invest time and effort in their games. And we do believe it is successful in this regard, especially when compared to the other major metasets.

There are three main tools to create, sell and monetize game assets and experiences

VoxEdit

This is a 3D modeling and animation program designed to create voxel-based assets for The Sandbox. It is completely free to use. Players can model, animate, edit and export anything to build their own game experience or sell it on the market.

Those who apply and are accepted into the Sandbox Creator’s Fund will receive assignments and rewards for making very high quality voxel-based art assets that will be released on the game’s marketplace.

To date, over 100 artists have been supported through the fund.

The Game Maker

This is an easy-to-use tool that allows you to design, test and share experiences such as games in a sandboxed metaverse. It provides a drag-and-drop interface that gives you the ability to put different elements and objects into an environment, define how the elements interact, and share them with the community.

Through the Game Maker Fund, people who have proven skills in game design or digital world design are rewarded and incentivized to help produce and publish great games and experiences for players in the sandbox to play.

To date, 18 games have been subsidized through this fund.

The Marketplace

This is the first step in monetizing voxel assets created in VoxEdit, for example, by purchasing land. It allows players to trade player-owned or created assets that are interoperable across games and different platforms (for example, you can buy avatars of Snoop Dog, BAYC, Moonbirds, etc.).

Do you just want to hang out in the sandbox as a casual player and complete quests? You can do that. Instead, do you want to use your creative skills to create anything you want, from very simple objects or entire buildings to animated dragons or complete games? These tools enable you to do so, without any coding experience. Finally, do you want to earn $SAND and real world money from your creations or buy avatars of Steve Aoki and other famous people or brands? This marketplace allows you to do so.

Given the emphasis on creators, one of the main tasks of the Sandbox development team in the coming months will be to constantly update and improve the creator tools.

We’ve heard that concerts will be added to the Game Maker build feature by the end of the year …… Just sayin’!

How The Sandbox embraces Web3

Oh boy, here comes the cheating part …… No

The Sandbox” can be played as a full-fledged meta-space, and it’s free. Its gameplay is enjoyable and energizing, and we did find ourselves intrigued each time we entered a new experience, especially if it was from a brand or celebrity we’d heard a lot about.

Also, the thought that everything we saw and interacted with was created on the fly by the studio or other players (and that we could have easily done the same) made it a unique world to explore at least once.

But given that Sandbox is by design a community-driven project, this means that players are no longer passive actors, but people who bring and expand the boundaries of the game.

In addition to the tools mentioned above, these Web3 elements have so far allowed to reward players and stimulate engagement and growth during the Alpha phase.

$SAND

This is the ecosystem currency of the sandbox, which also grants you the right to vote (bet) and participate with other players and developers in the development and evolution of the game.

SAND dollars are also required to buy and sell tradable game items, such as land and assets, on the sandbox marketplace.

You can get it by completing quests, through community events and contests, by becoming an ambassador for the game, or by buying it on external exchanges. The total amount of $SAND in circulation is 3,000,000,000 units.

LAND

Every piece of land visible on the map is the first use case for digital real estate, and given the opportunities that major brands and celebrities see through buying or leasing land, this is considered to be a multi-billion dollar market already, an innovative way to reach and entertain a younger generation of gamers.

For example, celebrities like Snoop Dog purchased LAND on the Sandbox (Snoopverse) in early 2022 to host some of his shows there, increasing the value of the neighboring LAND to $450,000 each due to increased gamer traffic in the area.

Owning land also gives each player or creator a number of opportunities, including management/voting rights that you can exercise when small or critical matters arise in the community regarding the sandbox. Allowing landowners to further monetize their property is one of the most critical priorities in the game’s roadmap.

GEMs

These will define the properties of an asset. The more properties your assets have, the more useful you will find them in the sandbox, thus increasing their value. They serve as a reward for betting $SAND on land, although they are currently only allocated to landowners.

CATALYSTs

These define the number of GEM pockets your asset has and how scarce they are. They will be allocated to landowners only at first.

Alpha Season 3 is also a big step towards interoperability, with 130,000 certified avatars from existing collections (like BAYC) already in the sandbox. Imagine a bored ape interacting with Snoop Dogg or Steve Aoki to merge their lands and co-create initiatives for their communities. Interoperability at its finest!

How to play The Sandbox?

The game is currently in the Open Alpha phase. Alpha Season 3 has just started and all of its experiences are open to anyone. However, in order to earn SAND dollars, you will need an Alpha pass, which can be earned through sweepstakes and contests on The Sandbox’s official channels.

The game is currently only available for Windows and MAC operating systems, but mobile is already on the team’s roadmap with different approaches and solutions.

Conclusions

As gamers, we find The Sandbox Alpha to be not only an engaging, varied and evolving metadata experience, but especially a platform where we can play an active role, or better yet, one of the only roles that matters: content consumer and creator. We have found an impressive number of well-known brands and gamers who believe in this project and continue to support it.

The use of blockchain technology to enhance the gaming experience is an ongoing debate within the gaming industry. In the end, the ability to embrace the web3 concept and implement it depends on the vision of the developers and the response of the respective gaming communities.

Metaspace platforms like Minecraft or Fortnite or Roblox have adopted interoperability as a way to enrich the gaming experience based on player preferences, but it is still limited to no “real” spillover effect to specifically reward players.

On the other hand, other elements, such as player-driven economies, have so far not been embraced by these major metros as an approach. For example, tradable game assets (NFTs) are considered as a means of exclusion and speculation.

Instead, The Sandbox sees blockchain technology as an enabler of user-generated content, allowing games to scale indefinitely on the basis of creativity and rewards. It is bold enough to fully embrace it as a key differentiator and core model to reach the top 2 by asset transactions.

The corresponding flywheel of brands and creators generated by this decision so far tentatively validates a key assumption: gamers are gamers first and foremost, but they do want to own assets and be rewarded for their efforts in the game, if the developer enables them to do so.

Of course, the digital economy as a whole is not immune to speculation. As we’ve seen in other emerging games such as Grand Age, as long as tradable assets are ingrained and conducive to a more enjoyable gaming experience, speculation is minimized as players determine their market price based on the intrinsic asset value (items, weapons, cosmetics).

Elements of the sandbox, such as tokens, LAND, or the art displayed in each experience, may be more subject to speculation, true, just as they are in the real world, but this is just the tip of the economic iceberg where everyone can be the creator, choosing to own or monetize their creative efforts and define the roadmap for their favorite games with the developers. At least now players can make real choices.

The development team has also been bold enough to adopt specific terms from the start, such as NFT, cryptocurrency wallets, exchanges and game revenue, which have been received differently in the broader gaming community, especially in 2022. However, thanks to key partners and a growing user base, it is able to build a self-sustaining experience with players and brands that understand the opportunities web3 gives, rather than rising up against it.

The more the gaming space and sandbox evolves, the more the lines between a pure gaming experience and a way to communicate with the capabilities that the blockchain brings must become blurred.

There is no longer a need for specific technology-related gaming guidelines or terminology that calls NFTs NFTs, rather than gaming assets that can be owned and sold for real-world money.

We look forward to seeing where the community will lead the sandbox!

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