Become a Creator in the Sandbox

Influenced by new technologies and new gaming trends, video games have changed a lot in the past years, but the gamers’ demand for innovative experiences has not. With each new generation of consoles or PC hardware, gamers seek out the most compelling storylines and gameplays, as developers work hard to come out with new approaches to provide us hours and hours of entertainment. And following the hottest trends in the online world today - blockchains and NFTs - the gaming industry is being taken to a whole new level.

The world’s first blockchain was created to serve as a public ledger for Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency to solve the double-expenditure problem. The blockchain is a series of blocks, or records, that contain cryptographic hashes and timestamps, making it virtually impossible to be hacked. Since its creation in 2008, the blockchain has improved even further, and today this technology is being used to revolutionize several markets. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are units of data on a blockchain and they usually represent an unique item, whether it’s a collectible card or an item within a game. Most gaming NFTs are smart contracts based on the Ethereum blockchain, and can be traded in decentralized gaming marketplaces.

Apart from being based on this new technology and providing new gaming experiences, blockchain games, or crypto games, also enabled developers to reward players for their time and effort invested in the game, by allowing them to monetize all content they create and earn money through the game. There are many blockchain games already available, but most of them involve collecting and trading something, like cards, virtual pets, and Pokémon-like creatures. 

Developed and published by Animoca Brands, The Sandbox Game is a promising adventure game scheduled to be released later this year. It departs from the collectible gameplay mechanics in most blockchains games, and focuses on designing worlds and interactive adventures, in a fully decentralized ecosystem.

Create everything

As stated in its whitepaper, The Sandbox aims to bring blockchain gaming into mainstream, by building a creative gaming platform, owned and made by players, where gamers can enjoy play-to-earn features with the advantages of true ownership, digital scarcity, content monetization and interoperability.

In the Sandbox virtual environment, players can build worlds, apply different gameplay mechanics to create their own games, and develop characters and narratives in a decentralized ecosystem. All these creations can be placed on LANDs, the game’s building lots, or trade them in the form of NFTs in the game’s marketplace.

Its gaming ecosystem consists of three groundbreaking integrated tools that, brought together, provide a new comprehensive experience for user generated-content: VoxEdit, Game Maker, and the Marketplace. VoxEdit allows players to create, rig and animate their own voxel-based assets, including avatars, equipment and scenery objects. It is an easy-to-use 3D voxel modelling package consisting of a modeler, an animator and a NFT maker. With Game Maker, the most important tool in the Sandbox, players can export these assets into the game, place them in their LANDs, and implement mechanics to create interactive worlds and full gaming experiences. Finally, assets can be sold, bought, and traded in the Marketplace with the creative rights bound to their creators. All of these transactions are done with the game’s currency, SAND.

As a creator, it’s easy to profit from the game, and gamers are encouraged to design multiple assets, create different adventures, and share their experiences with others, thus building an intertwined gaming community in which players can contribute in many creative ways.

Show me the SAND!

SAND is the cryptocurrency used to deal everything inside the Sandbox, from accessing other players’ worlds and levels and playing their adventures, to trading in the Marketplace. It is an ERC-20 token, which means SAND is an utility token based on the Ethereum blockchain that can be sent and received, and, just like coins, each token is exactly the same in type and value. With SAND, players can invest as well, as the game features a stock market with a realistic passive revenue system and liquidity pool.

Since The Sandbox features a revolving metaverse, SAND is also used as a governance token, and holders can exercise voting rights on key decisions, and participate in the management of the platform via a Decentralized Autonomous Organization. This gives players total control over every aspect of the game, as opposed to conventional video games.