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1992: Bestselling writer Neal Stephenson uses the term "metaverse" in his novel "Snow Crash" for the very first time.
2021: Facebook changes its name to Meta and hires 10,000 employees to create the metaverse.
Thirty years later, Stephenson's idea becomes reality and the financial market reacts positively. Projects like Decentraland, The Sandbox and Axie Infinity are definitely exploding, creating a high workforce demand. Game development, cybersecurity, blockchain, data analysis, the list goes on. McKinsey forecast shows that the metaverse has the potential to grow up to $5 trillion by 2030. The IT industry is set to build the digital future.
What is The Sandbox?
The Sandbox is a 3D platform where users can trade, buy and sell community-generated contents. It is a virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain. The idea of The Sandbox was born in 2012 by Pixowl. The game concept, developed initially for mobile devices, was to build 2D digital content within the game world. Thanks to its success, Animoca Brands acquired Pixowl in 2018, transitioning the game to blockchain infrastructure to allow users to create game content as NFTs. In 2019, Animoca Brands received two rounds of investments, $2.5 million from Hashed and $2 million from other large investors, including Square Enix. In 2020, Atari announced a collaboration with The Sandbox, which involves the construction of a theme park within the game. The Sandbox was released in alpha stage in November 2021 and, during the year, the gaming company signed multiple deals with noteworthy brands: The Smurfs, The Walking Dead, Snoop Dogg. As of March 2022, The Sandbox already had more than 2 million users.
Gameplay and game mechanics
The Sandbox’s genre is called sandbox: it is a video games genre which does not follow a storyline or a script, instead it provides to users a world to interact with and basic tools to express their creativity. Everything revolves around creating content. Users themselves decide how to populate their world. The Sandbox gameplay, in addition to world exploration, involves three main tools: Voxel Editor, Marketplace and Game Maker. The Voxel Editor allows users to create 3D game elements (people, animals, objects, tools, etc.), which can be sold as NFTs (called ASSETS) on the Marketplace. On the latter, in fact, users buy and sell NFTs (which can be used within the game) with the in-game token SAND, the official cryptocurrency of the game. Through Game Maker, users have a chance to assign their ASSETS to one of their LANDs. LANDs are digital plots of land, which can also be purchased as NFTs. By owning a LAND, players are allowed to edit their virtual space by using the ASSETS purchased on the Marketplace.
The future of The Sandbox
Along with Decentraland, The Sandbox is the most popular representation of the metaverse today. Despite minimal graphics and sparse gameplay, the world of Animoca Brands comes close to the idea of the metaverse we will live in the near future. The decentralization achieved by using the blockchain and the concept of community-owned content are only the first steps. It is no coincidence that large investors and luxury brands have expressed their interest by taking part in its development or establishing partnerships with Animoca Brands. Last but not least, the Paris Hilton announcement: she will build her Malibu Mansion within The Sandbox, where exclusive virtual events will be held in the metaverse.
A digital evolution
The pandemic has dramatically speed up the development of new emerging technologies. Plus, thanks to the rebrand of Facebook in Meta, the push towards the metaverse is the result of the digital transformation: jobs have been transitioning to platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet; the blockchain development and the adoption of cryptocurrencies are symptoms of the aforementioned digital transformation; the metaverse seems to be an imminent reality, not a mere futuristic concept. Furthermore, 87% of Generation Z has an average weekly playtime of around 7 hours.
Don't live the future as a sidekick... be a superhero! Discover Geeks Academy’s training offer in Gaming & Metaverse:
Into the Metaverse is an in-depth series about the metaverse and its development. Below a comprehensive list of the video games we have been talking about:
Sources:
https://installers.sandbox.game/The_Sandbox_Whitepaper_2020.pdf
https://beincrypto.com/paris-hilton-virtual-malibu-mansion-sandbox/