What’s up degens & good day to all of you normies out there! Let’s get straight to it. First, I’ll give you the short answer to the question above. Is The Sandbox Metaverse ready for launch at the time of writing this piece (October 31, 2022)? Well, the short answer is: NO!
I guess that depends on how polished you feel a game / Metaverse should be prior to going live to the masses. Before diving into what I think of The Sandbox in its current state, I think we should set the stage a little. Let’s face it, the all encompassing “Metaverse” to-date has pretty much been a massive flop in the public’s eyes.
My dentist recently asked me “What do you do for work?”. “Metaverse stuff…”, I replied. Her response was pretty funny to me, but a good indication of what normies are thinking right about now. It went something like this: “Metaverse…? Oh, I thought that disappeared or something. Mark Zuckerberg gave up on it.” The hilariously overused term popped into my head, “We’re so early.”, but I just let her know that the true Metaverse builders don’t trust Zucks and Meta should likely stick to something like hardware development for a grasp on the industry.
Anyways, I digress. Most of the normies have no idea what is going on and terms like Metaverse, Web3, Blockchain, NFTs, and the like either scare them or they have a knee-jerk SCAM thought process about this kind of vocab.
Why Isn't The Sandbox Ready for Launch?
I’ve participated in the Alpha Season 2 as well as Alpha Season 3 quite extensively for The Sandbox. I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to play in Season 1 as you required an NFT that was quite expensive at the time and I wasn’t willing to drop the Eth just to test a game. Although, there are some pretty fire rewards to be earned playing in The Sandbox Alphas and I definitely recommend people do so if they have the chance.
The Sandbox Alpha Season 3 was quite fun for the first few weeks or so. Each day, new experiences opened up that were created by some quite recognizable brands & influencers. These IPs included: Atari, Steve Aoki, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Care Bears, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Smurfs, Gucci, RTFKT, Avenged Seven Fold (never heard of them), and more. It was entertaining at first, but by week 3, completing the experiences became a chore. The gameplay was mundane and repetitive, the multiplayer experiences were buggy and laggy, there’s no sense of competition with other players except for a timer that was exploited so badly that it was embarrassing.
I’m not trying to talk-down on the Alpha Season 3 too hard, but when half of the experiences ended up being unchanged and just straight up repeats of Season 2, that made me feel that we are still a very long way from launching anything that the general public, standard gamers, or even the Web3 crowd will want to play. I’d say the main reason most players are playing is to win the potential SAND token rewards that are available for users that complete specific tasks.
Here's an example of @PepeGawd's speed run on RTFKT Meta Dungeon experience for Season 3
At the core of my opinion that The Sandbox is not ready for a general launch is the builder. The builder is Sandbox’s SDK of sorts, although it is indeed very limiting. It really reminds me of Warcraft 3 World Editor which allows you to set health for enemies, customize trigger regions, set camera positions, etc. However, it definitely leaves much to be desired, especially for any seasoned developer. Heck, even an intermediate or hobbyist game developer would want more out of this tool.
One of the big drawbacks of The Sandbox Builder is its “No Code” policy. Sure, this makes it easy for anybody without programming knowledge to jump in and spin up a quick game, but it leaves a lot to be desired for possibilities that we expect in the Metaverse. You’re not going to see somebody spin up something like Decentral Games Ice Poker in The Sandbox anytime soon. There’s no coding capabilities, no video imbeds, no custom sounds or music, you can’t even have a GIF NFT in your experience right now.
To sum things up, I think the builder needs some major improvements along with better multiplayer and competitive capabilities before Sandbox is going to get true creators hopping on the platform to drive traffic.
So, Is The Sandbox Metaverse Fun? Does It Still Have Potential?
Absolutely! Yes, it does seem like I just tore this Metaverse a new a-hole, but I still do think there is some major potential here. I hope that some day, we will look back on this post and think, “OMG remember when we couldn’t even do {BLANK} in The Sandbox?”.
The Metaverse project seems to have a solid team behind it and with all of the brand support, I’m certain new, better, and more fun experiences will continue to be developed. I personally have some great ideas for competitive experiences that would be a great fit for The Sandbox Builder setup once the multiplayer aspects are more ironed out.
I’m going to continue to play with the builder, Voxedit (asset creation tool), and participate in as many Sandbox experiences as I can. Just so long as they aren’t anything like Missing Parts, Chapter 1 . If you haven’t played in Season 3 you won’t know what I’m talking about, but let’s just get you to imagine 1 hour of the most boring and terrible dialogue of a love story with absolutely zero game mechanics other than walk to another person and click them for dialogue. How that one squeaked past the Alpha Season 3 experience approval committee is beyond me. Come to think of it, that experience may have single handily made me not continue playing for this Season. Here’s an example of a streamers video: Missing Parts Chapter 1 Walkthrough by PlokTheMasterGamer.
Good Luck Sandbox! We'll Be Watching!
I believe I speak for quite a few other Web3 / Metaverse enthusiasts when I say that this is just the beginning for Sandbox. Although it isn’t ready to go live and be a fun creation and gaming experience, there is definitely something there. I wish The Sandbox team good luck and we’ll be watching and participating when we can.
Here’s my wish list for Season 4:
- Better multiplayer compatibility
- Competitive experiences (not the disastrous timer implementation for Season 3)
- Video embeds
- Custom sounds & music
- No repeat experiences for Gawd’s sake
Thanks for reading! Peace!
