The Sandbox: Is it following the Roblox playbook?

The Sandbox's popularity has soared recently, partly owed to the euphoria around non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse wave this year. Its influence was boosted further by collaborations with big business brands and celebrities like Adidas, Snoop Dogg, Atari, Deadmau5, The Smurf, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and many others.

The Sandbox is an open metaverse that aims to provide an integrated social and immersive gaming experience that unites players and developers. The Sandbox is a cross-genre game that features an open-world environment, massively multiplayer online (MMO) gameplay, and, as the name implies, it is also a sandbox game. A sandbox game is a video game with gameplay that enables the incorporation of creative elements into the game; as such, the term "sandbox" stems from the nature of a sandbox that lets children practically create whatever they wish within it. Interestingly, sandbox games have their own category on Steam, a major gaming platform, with close to 3,000 sandbox games available on the platform. The Sandbox is the first gaming protocol and a pioneer of the sandbox category within the blockchain industry.

To date, The Sandbox has raised an aggregate of $96.41 million funding through its seed round in 2019 ($3.41 million) and the latest Series B led by SoftBank in 2021 ($93 million).

The Sandbox has been around since 2012 and was developed by a gaming studio Pixowl Inc before Animoca Brands acquired them in 2018. The first-title franchise of The Sandbox game is still available today on iOS, Android and Steam. However, the game is not related to the blockchain-powered version that we know today. Despite the brand acquisition by Animoca Brands, the CEO and COO of Pixowl still hold their positions as the CEO and COO of The Sandbox, including the blockchain version.