Individual creators will ultimately shape the metaverse: Sandbox founders

November 3, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Adidas

As the firm moves to open up The Sandbox Map, co-founder Sebastian Borget said he believes individual creators and brands will ultimately drive what the metaverse of the future will offer.

Individual creators and brands will ultimately determine the future of the metaverse as opposed to any centralized entity, according to the co-founders of The Sandbox.

On Nov. 3, the team behind the Ethereum-based metaverse announced on X it had made The Sandbox Map accessible to everyone, where “LAND” owners can publish their own experiences without needing to partake in an application process (which was previously required).

THE METAVERSE IS NOW OPEN

Starting today, LAND owners in The Sandbox can instantly publish experiences on the map!

We're accelerating user-generated content to unleash the creative potential of creators like you. Let's build the metaverse together. #UGC #CreatorsDayHK pic.twitter.com/A2E8gNI2it
— The Sandbox (@TheSandboxGame) November 3, 2023

“Now [anyone] can open their experience to the public [and] make it accessible, which will increase the amount of experience and content that people can play and discover on the platform,” Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget told Cointelegraph in an earlier Nov. 2 interview during Hong Kong FinTech Week.

#CreatorsDayHK is LIVE!

Livestream all the key events on X or our YouTube channel: https://t.co/83NqKyOTDr

We've got some exciting news that you won't want to miss. Stay tuned to see what's in store for the metaverse! pic.twitter.com/ReUQahbckP
— The Sandbox (@TheSandboxGame) November 3, 2023

The notion that users can create and own content and property in Web3 is at the forefront of Sandbox’s strategy, Borget iterated.

“They discover blockchain not because of the value of the asset, but because they can create content.”

Updates to Game Maker and a new fund

Sandbox said it will also update its Game Maker tool before 2024, its experience-building and testing tool that is set to introduce new gameplay mechanics, templates and social interactions to make content production even easier.

The firm will also “reignite” its new 100 million SAND Game Maker Fund (currently worth $36 million) next year to build on those updates.

Borget said this will drive engagement across a range of industries:

“[It will] drive more engagement, more replayability, more fun and new social interaction as we define the future of music, the future of fashion, sport, entertainment, art and culture on the platform.”

Borget said Game Maker’s tools have simplified the process for new creators to get started:

“Game Maker has been a gateway to bring a new breed of creators that then design new experiences and then over time monetize it by selling on marketplace and introducing their own.”

Meanwhile, Sandbox co-founder and CEO, Arthur Madrid, said the firm has helped connect brands to fans of late by running contests to rebuild New York’s Times Square and architectures in The Walking Dead, among other things.

The firm is working to incorporate multiplayer capabilities which will drive this audience engagement. But Madrid acknowledged the difficulty with integrating multiplayer capabilities in metaverses at scale, particularly on blockchains.

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Dive in TODAY! https://t.co/bK636FFLLW #DrBomkusTrials pic.twitter.com/8Nui4b1UKU
— The Sandbox (@TheSandboxGame) November 1, 2023

Over 400 partners have signed up to The Sandbox, including Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, Gucci Vault, Snoop Dogg, Invincible and Adidas.

Looking ahead however, Borget acknowledged that metaverse adoption won’t take off until more defined use cases are established in virtual worlds, as incoming users are ultimately looking for memorable experiences to gravitate towards.

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Metaverse is dead in the West, but ‘so hot’ in Asia: Sandbox co-founder

September 12, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Sandbox co-founder Sebastian Borget says the metaverse sector is thriving in Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan.

The metaverse might feel like it's “dead” for users living in the United States but the industry is thriving throughout Asia, says The Sandbox co-founder and COO, Sebastien Borget.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Asian Blockchain Gaming Alliance's Web3 Summit in Singapore on Sept. 12, Borget said that over the last year, roughly 50% of Sandbox’s business has come from several countries in Asia.

“If you don't focus on Asia, you will think the metaverse is dead from the North American and the Western side,” said Borget.

“But it's so hot in Asia. Hong Kong and Korea are the top two markets followed by Japan.”

Meanwhile, Borget noted that he is soon to announce the launch of Lion City on stage at Token 2049 in Singapore, a new neighborhood of 512 virtual land plots in the Sandbox metaverse, that aims to showcase Singapore’s culture through a partnership with a number of global brands.

Borget aldetailed how The Sandbox had just closed a major virtual land sale in Turkey where the metaverse has what he described as a “big ecosystem.”

*Sebastien Borget speaking on stage at the Asian Blockchain Gaming Alliance Web3 Summit. Source: Cointelegraph*

“The Sandbox ecosystem has grown to well over 400 brands, 700 partners around the world and 200 verified agencies that are building on Sandbox,” he added.

Despite the slowing use of the metaverse in the West, Borget looked to a number of new developments in the Web3 and virtual reality sector more broadly with a sense of optimism.

The first notable development was the introduction of dynamic NFTs, which allow the creators to alter the metadata and change the appearance and features of a given asset.

“I feel like every NFT has to become truly unique, not just in appearance, but in all the metadata attributes.”

“We often do this comparison with the real world, where it's like: if I buy a tennis racket — is it the same if I buy it, and it has been used by Pete Sampras, before or after?” Borget jested.

Additionally, Borget noted the release of Apple’s Augmented Reality Vision Pro headset as a major step forward for the metaverse industry, with the extended-reality features allowing for digital assets in physical environments to look just as real as real ones.

“This leads to digital assets becoming even closer to you. Instead of just sitting in a wallet that you have to open in a certain browser or application page, but in your surrounding environment,” Borget explained.

“Now that you can see your content close up, you can interact with it even more.”

Ultimately, Borget concluded that there’s no right or wrong way for the metaverse sector to foster widespread Web3 adoption.

“There’s a good position of the traditional gaming industry that believes Web3 adoption will only come if you provide games that provide the same level of quality as web2 games where blockchain is a feature.”

While Borget admitted that might be a strong use case for many gaming companies in the space, he noted that metaverses like The Sandbox help create new experiences for users that differ from the world of traditional gaming.

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Digital assets should be valued as ‘proper property’ — Sandbox co-founder

May 16, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Around 5 billion people are online and digitally-bound assets should get the same treatment as any other type of property, says Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget.

Digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) should be recognized as legitimate property, especially as more of the world’s population goes digital, argues the co-founder of The Sandbox.

Speaking to Cointelegraph’s editor-in-chief, Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr, during Blockchain Week Rome last week, Sebastien Borget said thso-called “digital natives” — those who grew up with and subsequently have an increased confidence with digital devices — are growing.

“More than half of the world's population is now a digital native,” said Borget. The United Nations reported in December 2021 that almost two-thirds of the world's population, nearly 5 billion people, were online.

“We have to build a future for them where if they spend more time and more money on digital assets, those should have value and should be recognized as proper property.”

He added the metaverse may give a new way for digital natives to connect and governments should “value the work [and] recognize the jobs” that happen in the space and start to treat “the digital economy as a real economy.”

Borget said while there are world events posing challenges to global stability such as the Russo-Ukrainian war and ever-increasing inflation, he believes the metaverse can be “a driving force for positive impact, social impact, more awareness and inclusivity.”

Hi from @wistaverse LAND in @TheSandboxGame.

The Arena One is a place for free speech for protests and social events. Unite global communities around important issues and provide a platform for their voices to be heard.

See you there!
https://t.co/9k2xFbKglU https://t.co/KA4iPVI7lm pic.twitter.com/6r6tm3MW2B
— Sebastien (@borgetsebastien) May 13, 2023

Borget believes lowering the barrier to creating digital content opens new opportunities for many and cryptocurrencies can provide access to payments in countries where “the banking system is maybe not as developed.”

Artificial intelligence is one of the “driving forces” that can empower creators and accelerate the idea-generating process, according to Borget.

“Everything that you have in mind now is a text prompt you can render and visualize. Before, it used to take days,” he said.

It’s not, however, at a level where it can produce content without “some human work” to get it up to scratch, Borget cautioned.

Borget said he hopes to create a platform where people can best reflect their inner talents and skills, which may best blossom in “the virtual world” such as helping in mental health.

“Being a platform that offers this possibility for people to find their own reason is great,” he added.

“You create a world where you see new experiences, new content, new ideas and the sum of that is always more positive than negative.”

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Play-to-earn falling out of favor after ‘massive shift in priority’ — BGA survey

January 12, 2023 Coin Telegraph

BGA

Gameplay improvements will be the biggest driver of blockchain gaming adoption in 2023, according to a survey from the Blockchain Gaming Alliance.

The blockchain gaming industry is experiencing a "massive shift," with the once-popular play-to-earn (P2E) model falling out of favor and focus directed now at improving gameplay experience, a new survey has found.

The survey results were included in a newly released annual report from the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) on Jan. 12, which was conducted with 347 professionals, representing 252 different projects or companies in the blockchain sector.

Most of the respondents were young adult males working for blockchain gaming companies in middle and top management positions, according to BGA.

One of the trends gleaned from the report was an apparent shift in how blockchain gaming executives viewed P2E as a driver for blockchain gaming adoption.

*Graph showing factors that could impact blockchain gaming adoption. Source: BGA*

In 2021, the report found 67.9% of respondents agreeing that P2Es would be the most significant growth driver of blockchain gaming. The latest survey found this number shrinking to just 22.5%.

Instead, gameplay improvements was seen as the biggest driver for adoption in 2023 with 35.7 of respondents saying gameplay improvements will be the industry's top priority.

Pedro Heddera, head of research and analytics at Dapp insights company Dappradar cited P2E’s fading out as a result of “falling crypto prices and upcoming free-to-earn games” paving the way for the new generation of web3 games, adding:

“2023 is shaping up to be a make-or-break year.”

Co-founder of web3 consulting company Blockminds Rowan Zwiers stated in the report that despite the previous hype achieved by P2E games during the first generation of blockchain gaming, the industry is currently in the midst of a “drawback to normalcy.”

Zwiers said that P2E models have “proven themselves unsustainable” but showed the need for the development of the next generation of more advanced blockchain gaming dynamics.

Meanwhile, Chief Investment Officer of Hartmann Metaverse Ventures Felix Hartmann said that “cheap point-and-click browser” P2E’s are no longer getting the funding they used to get as “capital has gotten smarter and more demanding.”

Hartmann suggested that venture capitalists are turning their attention to a better experience for gamers. He noted:

“More cutting-edge game studios integrating web3 and AI into Unreal Engine-based, high-fidelity games are seeing more traction.”

Despite the decline in popularity for P2E’s, co-founder of Mirai Labs Corey Wilton said that the “lovers” of the original P2E model will always exist, but it is clearly more profitable to create games that “captures the casual everyday gamer.”

The report highlighted that poor gameplay and the problem of blockchain gaming concepts not being understood were the biggest issues in blockchain gaming.

Overall, the blockchain gaming industry is still growing significantly, despite the extended crypto winter, according to a section of the report supported by DappRadar.

On-chain game transactions reached 7.4 billion, growing 37% from 2021 and a staggering 3,260% since 2020.

*Key Takeaways for 2022. Source: DappRadar x BGA Games Report 2022*

The report stated that the crypto winter has not impacted the number of blockchain gamers for existing games.

President of the Blockchain Games Alliance Sebastien Borget said this indicates to him that the industry is “putting players first,” more so focusing on the benefits of blockchain to the gaming industry over the volatile market.