We see not only towering titans like Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft, but also scrappy startups like Rec Room, VRChat, and CORE.Īnother curious contender is DotBigBang, a browser-based voxel sleeper hit that invites a direct comparison to The Sandbox, but without the crypto and virtual landlords. The pitch is that these platforms will carve out large “digital nations” and one day rival and even eclipse Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite, as well as Facebook/Meta’s potential offerings.īut blockchain games aren't the only ones who want a bite of the apple, and The Sandbox’s developer, Pixowl, would do well to remember that it faces competition on the conventional game front as well. These three games are pitching themselves as the future of UGC-based “metaverse” gameplay on the blockchain. Players without an Alpha Pass were still allowed to play, but could only access the hub world and three experiences, and they were barred from all play-to-earn activities. A closed alpha was offered in December, during which a select group of players who held one of 5,000 “Alpha Pass” NFTs were allowed to explore 18 curated experiences. It boasts a set of player creation tools as well as rich land sales, but current gameplay offerings are extremely limited. The Sandbox sits somewhere in the middle of the two projects. Players can also create custom 3D assets and animations to place in their virtual worlds, which in turn can be sold to other creators through an asset marketplace. The land plots themselves are privately owned and can be bought, sold, and traded for cryptocurrency, and, crucially, are required for deploying player-created experiences. In The Sandbox, players explore a virtual world of interconnected land plots, each of which can host an interactive experience created by another player. One game is consistently mentioned in these articles: The Sandbox, a voxel-based UGC platform with an aesthetic somewhere between Minecraft and Roblox that’s clearly attempting to emulate gameplay aspects of both. Or as Janine Yorio of Republic Real Estate famously told Bloomberg, “Buying land today in virtual worlds may end up feeling a lot like buying land in Manhattan in the 1750s.” As the next generation increasingly spends more time online, many investors (and speculators) are hoping to become real estate tycoons in the metaverse. In 2020, Minecraft earned $415 million in revenue, Roblox earned $920 million, and Fortnite earned $1.1 billion. These platforms make an incredible amount of money. These services are properly understood not simply as games but as a novel mix of gameplay, content distribution platform, and social network. Most importantly, these platforms have become a sort of “third place” where players go to just hang out with their friends and socialize, something that has become particularly central to their lives in the age of COVID. ![]() ![]() Roblox joins Minecraft and Fortnite to form an intimidating triumvirate of so-called “metaverse” platforms where players don’t just play games but actively shape them. Most notably, Roblox’s explosive IPO last year earned the company a valuation well above $40 billion. ![]() YouTube SprintingWorkouts.Axie Infinity popularized “Play to Earn,” but the next hottest buzzword in the blockchain gaming space is “Virtual Real Estate.” According to the Motley Fool, nearly a quarter of all NFT sales in early December were for Digital Land, and the buzz has gotten so hot that we’ve seen multiple articles on the subject from the mainstream media, with takes from The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, USA Today, Bloomberg, and The New York Times.Īt the same time, there’s an increasing investor hunger for user-generated content (UGC) platforms.
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