The metaverse has lost its appeal to investors as it has been superseded by artificial intelligence and has become the hottest investment trend. But Sebastien Borgier is undaunted. The co-founder and COO of Hong Kong-based Sandbox is stepping forward to show that the metaverse is the future, not just hype.
E.Even in the midst of Metaverse mania a year and a half ago, funding wasn’t easy for Web3 game company Sandbox, says co-founder and COO Sebastien Borget. Borje and co-founder Arthur Madrid typically took nearly a year to complete a funding round. What took the longest was convincing investors that the five-year-old company, a subsidiary of Asia’s largest blockchain investor Animoka Brands, could one day build a decentralized metaverse. “Running a sandbox is like a long marathon with many sprints,” he says in a video interview.
Rising interest rates are now discouraging investors from making more risky bets, such as sandbox attempts to build three-dimensional virtual worlds where entertainment, social interaction and digital ownership coexist. As a result, funding is becoming more difficult. Metaverse is no longer a buzzword for investors as futuristic but obscure concepts have proven time-consuming and expensive to bring to life. Instead, OpenAI’s viral chatbot, ChatGPT, prompted many investors to move to AI.
Despite low investor interest, Borge believes the Metaverse will continue to be a multi-billion dollar business as industries from retail to education are already in the early stages. Despite the number of sandbox players being only a fraction of established games such as fortnitecontains some metaverse characteristics, Bogett expects double-digit growth, fueled in part by the AI boom.
“We have been very particular about demonstrating what is possible in the metaverse as quickly as possible,” says Borget. “We have shown that this is not just a game, but a new form of entertainment that lies between social interaction and gamification.”
“And we intend to prove that the sandbox is resilient and independent of technology and cryptocurrency market crashes,” added the 38-year-old French man.
DJ Steve Aoki’s virtual concert at Virtual Land.
sandbox
Borget believes that ChatGPT and other generative AI tools will make virtual worlds and avatars easier to design and much faster to implement in the metaverse. For example, he reported that top game maker Activision Blizzard is already using generative AI to speed up the process of designing and developing games. new york times. Blizzard’s chief design officer, Allen Adham, told employees that “we are on the verge of a major evolution in how we build and manage our games,” according to the paper. times report.
AI can also help make the metaverse a safer space by applying its technology to filter offensive language from in-game dialogue, Boget adds.
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Sandbox is already experimenting with AI, specifically partnering with companies to design avatars using text prompts and create avatar actions from videos of human movement. Bogett said the company has partnered with, invested in, and potentially acquired AI companies that help improve his games in the Metaverse, including software for players to build gameplay and other experiences on virtual properties. It is said that it is considering.
Rabbids avatar collection.
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Unlike billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s meta, Sandbox’s metaverse is built on the blockchain, does not require a virtual reality headset, and can be accessed with a web browser. Sandbox claims to operate one of the largest decentralized metaverse platforms in terms of number of landlords. Since its launch in 2018, the sandbox has attracted nearly 23,500 virtual landowners and over 400 brands and his partnerships as of Q1. (Disclosure: forbes Among the companies that have recently collaborated with Sandbox are South Korean billionaire Bang Joon-hyuk’s game developer Netmarble and Singaporean billionaire Wong brothers’ fashion house Charles & Keith.
In a written response, Keith Wong, co-founder and COO of Charles & Keith, said, “Instead of being a viewer and simply looking at brand assets on social media, Charles & Keith Land will facilitate interaction and users will be able to play there and earn NFTs.” “The built-in space also allows us to express campaign concepts, thus increasing brand awareness by reaching a wider audience through the fusion of fashion and technology.”
Hotel mogul Conrad Hilton’s great-granddaughter and influencer Paris Hilton is one of 23,500 virtual landowners in the sandbox.
Rick Kern/Getty Images, “Sandbox”
But investors didn’t share the same enthusiasm. Capital injected into Web3 startups fell to $2 billion in the first quarter, the lowest level since 2020, according to funding data provider Crunchbase. That’s down from $10.8 billion in the first quarter of last year. Meanwhile, money raised by generative AI startups in the first three months of this year more than doubled compared to the same period in 2022, totaling $1.7 billion, according to PitchBook data.
For Sandbox, it’s been a year and a half since the company closed its final funding round. In November 2021, amid the funding bubble, the company raised $93 million at an undisclosed valuation from investors including SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. Borje said he is confident of further funding, but expects it will take longer under current market conditions.
Care Bears avatar collection.
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The sandbox should also attract more users to the metaverse platform. The game, which is currently in beta mode, saw over 100,000 players in the first quarter. That’s a 72% drop from the company’s most recent comparable figure, the 10 weeks to November. According to data providers CoinGecko and DappRadar, both sandbox game tokens and daily unique active wallet addresses have plunged more than 90% from their peaks more than a year ago.
Mr. Bogett dismissed the economic downturn, saying that the metaverse implementation was still “very active and ongoing.” A unique active wallet address each day only shows how many users are logged into the sandbox to make transactions, simply playing games or attending events such as virtual concerts. He explains that the number of is not shown.
Sandbox has announced that it has sold 70% of its 166,000+ digital land parcels. In the first quarter, companies and users put all about 460 parcels up for sale, and Sandbox said it made $1 million in sales. Borghetto added that more than half of the owners have owned virtual land for more than a year.
“We have more creators than ever before, more users than ever before, and more brands than ever before. We understand that you can play, engage and monetize our lands and creations.”
Borgett expects double-digit growth in player numbers for the rest of the year and into 2024 as Sandbox fully opens up the Metaverse gaming platform by the end of Q3. The platform is currently working to improve the platform and restrict player access to selected virtual worlds for a period of time.
Meanwhile, the company plans to release a Metaverse game for smartphones next year. The move would give sandboxing a piece of the mobile games market, which accounted for half of the $183 billion in overall gaming industry revenue last year, according to research firm Newzoo.
Smurf’s virtual land.
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Borget’s ambition to build an open metaverse where anyone can become a creator and monetize their work was fueled by his own experience. Borghetto, who describes himself as a geek, felt that developing his video games had a high barrier to entry, as it required expensive computer hardware and advanced programming skills for him.
A later open-source developer, Boget saw an opportunity in 2007 when Apple released the first iPhone and soon after it allowed developers to create low-cost apps and publish them on the App Store. I found He co-founded Pixowl in 2011 to develop his games for mobile, based in San Francisco, with Madrid, whom Borje met while working at a media sharing platform.
A year later, Pixowl launched Sandbox. He then created a 2D game in which players took on the role of disciples of God and built virtual worlds by dragging and dropping pre-made elements and drawing them on mobile screens. In 2017 it was an instant hit with 40 million total downloads and 1 million monthly active users. However, the boom did not last long.
“Even though it was successful, it was also frustrating.Despite the social prestige and reputation we gave them, most of the dedicated creators left over time,” Beauje recalled. increase. “We found that the reason was the lack of monetization and not sharing with the creators a portion of the revenue they brought in as a contribution to the game.”
Later that year, a glimmer of hope arrived when Borje and Madrid discovered the blockchain game CryptoKitties. The mechanism that allows players to own virtual cats in the form of NFTs and directly trade with other players shocked them and inspired them to develop a blockchain version of the sandbox.
Their move caught the attention of Animoca Brands. At that time, Animoca Brands had just discovered the potential of blockchain technology in games thanks to CryptoKitties. In 2018, the Hong Kong-based game maker acquired his Pixowl for around $4.9 million, then spun off the sandbox to focus on running his current Metaverse game platform.
Borgett said it will take at least another five years to complete building the open metaverse. Until then, he will stick with the same mindset he used to convince investors to back his business. “We just have to be patient and continue to build an open metaverse and be confident that we can build it,” he says.
