2024 So Far: The Sandbox Creators’ Journey and a Look at What’s Next

There’s still so much more to come later this year!

The first half of 2024 has been an exhilarating journey on The Sandbox! From exciting milestones, huge rewards, and innovative features, we’ve witnessed incredible creativity from our vibrant community.

As the lifeblood of our platform, we’re dedicated to helping creators shine. Let’s dive into some of the most thrilling moments and updates from the past six months, showcasing the best of what The Sandbox has to offer.

New Milestones

In the year’s first half, we celebrated an incredible milestone: 1000 Experiences Published by Creators in The Sandbox! This achievement represents the expansion of our community as we’ve welcomed new creators from around the globe. From Kravir — Pocket Champ by Rockbu in Brazil to The Last Tree by MuseGenie in Malaysia to Floating Haven by Sandja in Thailand, diverse and engaging experiences are flourishing in The Sandbox.

Unlocking More Ways for Creators to Earn

In the past six months, The Sandbox has been more committed than ever to supporting our growing creator community via programs like the Builders Challenge, offering a new way to monetize their work based on engagement. With a 1,500,000 SAND prize pool, hundreds of creators published their experiences on the Map and were rewarded for their work.

In fact, for the first Builders’ Challenge, there were over 680 experiences eligible to receive earnings, of which 300 were brand-new experiences, crafted by 404 unique creators, both new and existing.

Our top creator earned over 400,000 SAND, while the top ten combined earned over 1.1 million SAND — showcasing the real rewards of creating and engaging on The Sandbox!

The creativity and passion of our community have also manifested through our 15 Game Jams, inspired by partners like Little Prince, Madballs, Mocaverse, Hell’s Kitchen, RadicalXChange, Dr. Bomkus, Charles & Keith, and places around the world like the Philippines, Singapore, India, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Paris, where over 4,500 creators participated! For their stunning work, they were rewarded with a total of 600,000 SAND, contributing over 340 new experiences to The Sandbox Map.

Empowering Creativity

To support new creators, we introduced The Builders’ Launchpad, an initiative aimed at helping to fast-track our community’s games by providing these creators with expert support, plots of LAND, CATALYSTs, and opportunities to be featured on our homepage. This program has enabled creators to explore new genres while delivering diverse content to players. Since its start in May, we’ve seen over 50 creators accepted into the program, with 17 new projects underway.

We introduced six new Templates: Backrooms, Cooking Simulation, Resources Management, Tower Defense, and Survival, enabling creators to explore new genres and deliver diverse content to players.

To further support creation and monetization, we also distributed over 92,000 CATALYSTs to the community and introduced three new monetization use cases, including selling assets, gating experiences, and utilizing NFT sensors. We also shared tips to drive community engagement and created new channels, like the Featuring section, to help UGC experience discoverability.

And finally, our Game Maker and creation resources and tools continue to improve. We published a new version of Game Maker 0.10, which offered new game mechanics, creation tools, and more.

If you’re a creator, there has never been a better time to enter The Sandbox!

New Ways to Connect

New tools and milestones are nothing without a place to discuss them with your peers. To help foster conversation, we launched a new forum dedicated to creators. Overnight, over 500 of our most passionate creators joined the conversations happening on The Sandbox Forum. The conversations have flourished, resulting in over 400 posts where people are discussing the Builders Challenges, Game Jams, and other key news and events. It’s become a space where we can directly connect and engage with our creator community.

We launched our new Builders Bootcamps series in France and traveled to Japan, India, Turkey, and Hong Kong to meet with top creators and explore core gaming mechanics with our expert-level designers, who shared insights on using the Game Maker 0.10 update to create popular game types.

The launch of The Sandbox DAO (announced at NFC Lisbon) invited the community to propose and participate in governance decisions, helping to shape the future of the open metaverse. Still gaining steam, our DAO acts as a platform to suggest product improvements like Magic Palette, which transforms empty LAND into immersive, playable experiences with just a few clicks, and upcoming platform events like the one hosted by the Red Cross to raise money and awareness for their commitments.

Looking Ahead to the Second Half of 2024

Our efforts to support creators will continue to grow, with a focus on reinforcing successful current programs and products while launching new ones, including:

• Builders’ Challenge #2: This much-anticipated sequel to our original Builders’ Challenge offered another 1,500,000 SAND reward pool and invites creators to build new experiences using the latest Game Maker 0.10 features and rules, driving engagement in their games.
• New Game Jams: For the remainder of the year, we are hosting multiple Game Jams simultaneously, partnering with exciting artists and brands like The Little Prince, Aeko & Friends, Rabbids, Blond:ISH, and more. Stay tuned for more details!

• Game Maker 0.11: This update will enhance the experience for builders by introducing new game features and capabilities. It brings a dynamic library, team scoring, NPC-friendly systems, and exciting new templates, such as Survival and Idle games. These additions aim to make game creation more engaging, social, and immersive while also simplifying the process for creators.
• The Sandbox Creators Program: This new program will support creators throughout the entire creation process, from creating or buying to selecting their first asset to monetization. It includes ongoing assistance via the Forum, enhanced content on the Creator Portal, and the rollout of Builders Bootcamps in Korea, Thailand, and Southeast Asia.

Thank you for sharing your insights and challenges on the Forum and contributing innovative ideas to the DAO. Now more than ever, we are committed to our mission: empowering the next generation of creators to shape the future of entertainment, where culture intersects with gaming and true digital ownership is at the core.

Together, let’s continue to build a more vibrant, open, and diverse world!

See you in The Sandbox,

Mathieu Cervety, VP of Content