A Web3 outlet for Minecraft lovers

If you’ve spent much time paying attention to the evolving metaverse space, there’s one name you’re bound to have encountered at some point: Sandbox. Creators all over the NFT area have been included in the game, hosting projects and (at times) full-fledged in-game concert productions.

But what is The sandbox, right? Is it a game to earn (P2E)? A virtual world? A literal digital sandbox? Try all of the above. And several IPs and big companies have bet on their world, including The Walking Dead, Warner Music Group, and surprisingly, even Shaun The Sheep.

So it’s time to find out: why Sandbox?

The sandbox and the joy of creation

After acquiring the naming rights to a 2D sandbox game of the same name in 2018, Animoca Brands began work on developing one of the most ambitious projects in the then nascent blockchain gaming space yet. In November 2021, the Web3 supercharged version of The Sandbox launched, giving blockchain players a whole new world to explore, build and create. If that premise sounds familiar, it’s because The Sandbox was directly positioned as a Web3 update to Minecraft, even with similar-looking voxel-based graphics.

When Minecraft banned all blockchain technology – especially NFTs – on its platform in July 2022, several projects like NFT Worlds faced an impossible mission: developing a Web3-friendly competitor to one of the most successful video games ever made. Given the success of The Sandbox, Minecraft should have been the least of their worries.

So what makes The Sandbox so special? First, the eye-catching voxel-based graphics aren’t just for show. They also help simplify the suite of creative tools available to players looking to convert the hours spent playing the game into profit. Leading Sandbox’s set of tools is VoxEdit, which gives players the ability to build out animated voxel-based models that they can use either as assets for the main Sandbox game or their own games hosted in Sandbox’s virtual world. If it all sounds too good to be true, you might expect a high price for admission to The Sandbox. Well, we’re happy to tell you that Sandbox comes at the low, low cost of absolutely free. But the money you spend within the game depends entirely on you.

Play within a game

Users can create completely unique games within the framework of The Sandbox. Through the powerful and easy-to-use Game Maker tool, budding game developers can get their first reps in the room in an intuitive, code-free environment.

Not only is this tool readily available to the Sandbox’s user base, but The Sandbox also encourages users to continue making games, even setting up The Game Maker Fund to help subsidize the full-time development of games on the Sandbox platform. At the time of writing, nearly $1 billion worth of $SAND has been awarded to give recipients of this fund everything they need to bring their dream Sandbox game to life.

Since its launch in November 2021, monetization has been a clear focus for The Sandbox’s development team. Almost every engagement point with the game has a corresponding in-game reward. Most often this comes in the form of $SAND, The Sandbox’s official coin and cryptocurrency. Players can earn more SAND by trading or selling in-game assets they own, referred to in-game as ASSETS – in-game objects created on VoxelEdit – or LANDs, the in-game term for virtual land on the sandbox. These specific terms aren’t just a gimmick either. Given The Sandbox’s status as a blockchain game, these terms are coded into the game’s user interface to make it clear to players that these items are fully-fledged tradable NFTs.

Explore the virtual world

Like most other metaverse experiences built within the blockchain gaming arena, Sandbox offers players the ability to actually own digital plots of land within the game. If you’re wondering how to buy land in The Sandbox, the process is pretty straightforward.

First, make sure you have enough $SAND to make the purchase you have in mind. Every transaction in the Sandbox uses $SAND, whether it’s LAND or ASSETS. With the $SAND ready, the next step is to be on the lookout for LAND sales, which you can find on The Sandbox map on the official website. These LAND sales are usually announced weeks in advance, which should give you plenty of time to prepare. However, if nothing on the official website strikes you, you can also choose to pick up plots of virtual land on secondary NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea.

So what can you expect to do once you’ve secured a virtual land on The Sandbox? Well, pretty much anything.

When you finally sit down and play The Sandbox After immersing yourself in the vast suite of creative tools, you will finally begin to understand how and why the future of gaming may be driven by user-generated content above all else. When you step foot into The Sandbox for the very first time, there’s a good chance that almost everything you’ll see will be assets, worlds, and characters, all hand-built by members of the player base. As the name suggests, anything goes and the only limit to a player’s joy is creativity.