The Sandbox Announces Voxel Games Program to Partner With Indie Game Developers on Multiple Platforms

The Sandbox, an immersive metaverse platform and a division of Animoca Brands, announced its Voxel Games program to partner with indie game developers

The Sandbox, a division of Animoca Brands and an immersive metaverse platform, announced its Voxel Games program to partner with indie game developers on multiple platforms. Through Voxel Games, The Sandbox will be expanding the boundaries of its ecosystem by partnering with renowned indie developers and studios to create widely available games in its distinctive voxel style.

This initiative marks a new era of interoperability and growth for both The Sandbox platform and its user base, said Sebastien Borget, COO of The Sandbox, in an interview with me at Devcom/Gamescom.

“Now we have over six million users with an account. We continue to announce major brands and partnerships. The latest one was last July with Attack on Titan,” Borget said. “We have over 1,300 live experiences from like user generated content creators on the map. We distributed over 3 million SAND tokens to the creators during Builder Challenge one and two. So that’s been a key driver to increase the attractiveness for creators on The Sandbox.”

The company has has more than a dozen game jams around the world to stir up more creators for the platform. Nicola Sebastiani, chief content officer and the head of the U.S., has led the development of the Voxel Games program.

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

The Sandbox’s 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. Through existing creation tools like VoxEdit and Game Maker, first-time creators have been able to build voxel-based assets, games, and experiences without any coding experience.

Now, thanks to the Voxel Games program, professional game studios and indie developers can 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 its partners to build voxel-style games beyond its platform, The Sandbox furthers its mission of enabling an open metaverse. This initiative marks a new era of interoperability and growth for both The Sandbox platform and its user base, Borget said.

Additionally, it offers gamers a smooth and optional bridge to Web3, without the complexity of blockchain development and onboarding. This program will further drive and support the ecosystem of creators in The Sandbox by providing them access to the wider gaming world.

While all the 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, widening distribution possibilities to traditional platforms, Borget said.

The expansion beyond Web3 means that The Sandbox will keep evolving and experimenting to get its content in front of more people, Borget said.

“We come with a very different value proposition here. We don’t force people to build on a new chain and wait for the adoption of that chain,” Borget said. “The Sandbox has been amazing at abstracting the complexity of blockchain that people are owning avatars, or earning something, and they never interact with a smart contract at any point of time. And we want to keep that philosophy while broadening the spectrum of the games, the developers and the creators that we can reach out to.”

Game projects will utilize traditional game monetization mechanics including free-to-play, microtransactions, in-app purchases, and ads, while also incorporating the blockchain components of The Sandbox such as accepting its SAND utility token and its 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. “Engaging with indie developers and veteran game studios brings fresh ideas or proven gameplays to the table and helps us grow the widespread adoption of Web3 through voxel-style games.”

The Voxel Games program will allow indie studios to develop games utilizing the underlying technology and game engines of their choice while being able to leverage and benefit from The Sandbox’s significant existing communities and ecosystem, including:

● 6 million+ user accounts with 4.8 milion+ crypto wallets

● 25,000+ LAND token owners

● 55,000+ avatar owners, and

● 290,000+ SAND holders.

This, in turn, presents the opportunity to symbiotically increase the utility and adoption of the SAND token beyond the