The Sandbox, an immersive metaverse platform and a division of Animoca Brands, has announced its Voxel Games program to partner with independent game developers across multiple platforms.

Through Voxel Games, The Sandbox will expand the boundaries of its ecosystem by partnering with
Sandbox is a platform game that allows independent developers and studios to create widely available games in its distinctive voxel style. Sandbox is like a variation of Minecraft, only using blockchain technology. It has been adopted mainly by individual creators and brands so far, but now Sandbox is aimed at professional developers at independent game studios across multiple platforms.

“We now have over six million users with an account. We continue to announce major brands and partnerships. The most recent 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 user-generated content creators on the map. We gave away over 3 million SAND tokens to creators during Builder Challenge one and two. So that’s been a key factor in increasing the appeal of creators to The Sandbox.”

Reaching new developers

The company has hosted more than a dozen game jams around the world to attract more creators to the platform. Nicola Sebastiani, chief content officer and head of the United States, led the development of the Voxel Games program.

“We’re starting to work with third-party developers and studios to create games that use voxel style and content for games built with Unity, Unreal, or other engines,” Borget said. “So it’s not just the ‘no-code’ game creation tools that we’ve had on The Sandbox so far.”

Sandbox 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. With existing creation tools like VoxEdit and Game Maker, new creators were able to build voxel-based assets, games, and experiences without any coding experience.

Through the Voxel Games program, professional game studios and independent 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 partners to build voxel-based games beyond its platform, The Sandbox continues its mission to enable an open metaverse. This initiative marks a new era of interoperability and growth for The Sandbox platform and its user base, Borget said.

Additionally, it provides players with a seamless and optional gateway to Web3, without the complexity of blockchain development and integration. This program will further stimulate and support the creator ecosystem in The Sandbox by giving them access to the wider gaming world.

Expansion to new platforms

While all 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, expanding distribution opportunities to traditional platforms, Borget said.

Expanding beyond Web3 means The Sandbox will continue to evolve and experiment to bring its content to more people, Borget said.

“We’re bringing a very different value proposition here. We’re not forcing people to build a new chain and wait for that chain to be adopted,” Borget said. “The Sandbox has been incredible at abstracting away the complexity of the blockchain, in that people own avatars or earn something, and they never interact with a smart contract at any point. And we want to keep that philosophy while expanding the spectrum of games, developers, and creators that we can reach out to.”

The game projects will utilize traditional game monetization mechanisms including free-to-play, microtransactions, in-app purchases, and ads, while integrating The Sandbox’s blockchain components such as acceptance of its SAND utility token and 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. “Collaborating with independent developers and veteran game studios brings new ideas or proven gameplay and helps us increase the widespread adoption of Web3 through voxel-style games.”

The Voxel Games program will enable independent studios to develop games using the underlying technology and game engines of their choice while being able to leverage The Sandbox’s existing, extensive communities and ecosystem, including:
● Over 6 million user accounts with over 4.8 million crypto wallets
● Over 25,000 LAND token owners
● Over 55,000 avatar owners, and
● More than 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 cap according to CoinMarketCap at the time of publication, Borget said.

The Sandbox has over 170,000 voxel asset owners and 1.7 million assets already created. Through the Voxel Games program, projects will be exposed to over 400 partner brands, giving studios access to valuable intellectual property.

Existing users of The Sandbox will benefit from the ability to use their assets across a new portfolio of games, reinforcing The Sandbox’s vision where players can connect their wallets and use their owned and branded digital assets (avatars, gear, wearables, etc.) across multiple platforms and games.

Expanding beyond Web3 means The Sandbox will continue to evolve and experiment to bring its content to more people, Borget said.

“We’re bringing a very different value proposition here. We’re not forcing people to build a new chain and wait for that chain to be adopted,” Borget said. “The Sandbox has been incredible at abstracting away the complexity of the blockchain, in that people own avatars or earn something, and they never interact with a smart contract at any point. And we want to keep that philosophy while expanding the spectrum of games, developers, and creators that we can reach out to.”

“Games developed by external studios can leverage the benefits of The Sandbox, like our user base, our IPs, the 25,000 LAND owners or the 60,000 avatar owners, to integrate these digital assets that we have into The Sandbox and give them utility as well,” Borget said. “In a way, it expands what The Sandbox is because the brand is strong. The vision of the open metaverse allows players to 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 select studios, to other games on all platforms.”

He noted that players can start on the other platforms without Web3 functionality and then connect their wallets later if they want to engage with NFTs and SAND tokens.

“Today we are starting to bring in external development partners who can create games that can bridge the two worlds,” Borget said.

Sebastiani said the company has spoken to a number of game studios about the opportunity the program presents and has begun reviewing 50 applications. He noted that two have been announced and three more will be offered in the coming months. The titles include survival games, dungeon crawlers and more. It’s very different from the mash-up-style content The Sandbox is known for, Sebastiani said.

For players, the benefits are clear.

“Previously, they could only play experiences that were created on The Sandbox platform with the game creator,” Sebastiani says. “Now, as a player, I can start using my Snoop Dogg avatar and other avatars to play games on these other platforms. It can create something pretty unique, like carrying my digital identity across all the different games. And it also allows developers to create gameplay that brings together multiple IPs.”

Borget added: “This is one of the strengths of The Sandbox. It is very recognizable in the industry, where content is created on The Sandbox and voxel games were popularized thanks to Minecraft. Another advantage of this program is that developers can leverage our library of about 100,000 assets.”