Hello, everyone! Today, we are joined by Sandbox founder, Sebastien Borget.
Welcome to the show!
Hello, everyone!
It's a pleasure to be with you.
It is. And I know you are really impressed with my French pronunciation.
- I actually took four years of French-- - Oh, yes.
- I'm just kidding. I didn't take any French-- - I can feel it.
Yeah. I don't even eat French fries. I eat Freedom fries.
So, okay, well, today we will talk about Sandbox.
I mean, as a lot of people know, I'm, you know, intimately involved with Sandbox, having, you know,
a lot of LAND in the game.
I'm excited to see where this goes.
But let's start out first
talking about a place where people can kind of learn about NFTs and get some free SAND right now
if they want to go get it.
You want to tell us a little bit about the Learn & Earn program involving SAND and Coinbase?
CoinMarketCap. So, we've launched on CoinMarketCap last week.
One of their largest Learn & Earn campaign, where essentially we are distributing
10 million SAND to 40,000 users who are active users on CoinMarketCap
and which have like a KYC-approved account on Binance.
They just need to watch three short, one-minute long educated videos
that explain what is the Sandbox platform, what are NFTs,
what they can do with SAND token on our gaming virtual world,
they complete a quiz,
and they create their account on Sandbox,
and then they will be receiving $10 worth of SAND token,
which is, as of today, roughly 500 SAND token each.
So that's quite exciting. And I heard that we've been one of the most successful campaign they had,
driving into single days more than dozens of thousands of users who joined Sandbox platform
and had suddenly learned about NFTs.
So that's- that's been really effective in that sense.
Yeah. And I think, you know, NFTs themselves are going to change
you know, the gaming world. They're gonna change collectibles.
They're gonna change a lot of things.
I think, for me, being a person that didn't grow up being a gamer necessarily,
I mean, I played Mario Bros. when I was a kid, you know what I'm saying?
I played a lot of sports. I still play sports games.
My nine-year old beat me for the first time ever in Madden.
- Recently. And it was a really tough-- - Oh! Just slow down here.
Yeah, we were both on All-Pro.
And he absolutely got me by a touchdown. It was really sad. But the point being here
is that video games, for me, growing up, were not the central focus of everything I did.
Today, kids, this is the central focus of everything they're doing, and there's a lot of reasons for this.
But I think, you know, things are fundamentally changing socially,
the way that people get along and relate.
Uhuh
I think this is the part that a lot of people my age and up miss about gaming,
is we used to play games like, you know, timeline games.
You start here. You beat the game at the end, and it's over.
But, now, they're all open worlds.
And it's much more about being social with your friends
than it is like unlocking certain achievements or "beating" a game, so to speak,
like we were obsessed with when I was a kid.
What have you seen--? I'm sure a lot of that went into your thinking when you guys created SAND,
like, how do you kind of see the world changing in terms of video games and social--?
You know, the way people relate socially.
Well, definitely, I think like virtual world and games are the new social media.
Like,
we can see with Minecraft and Roblox as a platform with 200 million active users every month.
That's- that's huge!
Like, that's as big as YouTube or other social networks platform,
which means that they spend more time playing games and socializing in those platform
than actually on social media like we used to do.
There's just really this generational shift.
But going further, like, since we're looking at the broad picture of, like, we've been growing with games,
so I guess, like, you and me are kind of roughly the same age.
I've been growing with video game for like 20, 25 years,
and there's one thing that I never thought about, like, never struck me.
Anything I earned in those games, all those virtual content,
whether they were coins, achievement, badges, rewards, weapons, characters,
and, now, as mobile games came out towards the 2018s-- 2008,
and then--
There's been freemium. There's been in-app purchase.
You could spend real money to acquire those identities
instead of just playing through all experience.
And all that content, again, you pay real money,
you'll never get that content for yourself.
You cannot sell it. You lose it when you lose about the game,
so we've been grown accustomed to the idea that all of that virtual digital stuff was just virtual.
It was perishable, consumable. You will lose it no matter what.
And I think that that's just wrong from the basic. Like,
if all that virtual content, all those digital assets instead were ours,
and we could have been keeping them for all those years, as, like,
pre-used memorabilia, souvenirs,
things we could have been reselling or giving to our own kids,
some of them could have been growing in value.
And that's really like the shift we're starting to see.
And the younger generation gets it. They get it much more than us.
And it's only going to change more over the next decade as
as, like, they start now to experience with the idea like if they earned campaign in the game,
they can trade it with other users, they can resell it, and it has value and monetize.
- And they can even make a revenue out of it. - Yeah.
In Sandbox, we're essentially focusing with creators first.
That's because that's what our tool--
the different tools of the platform between Voxel Editor and Marketplace or Game Maker,
that's what's available.
The game itself is not yet available. It's going to launch a first public beta early next year.
So, we've essentially been focusing ourselves with creators,
and we've been empowering and changing lives of creators
by allowing them to create their own content and sell it.
Create games.
There's already over 18 projects supported by the Foundation,
the SAND Foundation of the Sandbox platform.
Teams, individual studio that are building games are on board,
contributing to the open and diverse Sandbox.
Yeah, it's exciting. And, you know, the-- we'll pop up a map of Sandbox right now
- so people can see, you know-- - Cool! Show us where you are.
Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we'll pop this up on the interview here so that the audience can see, like,
we have a lot of land on Sandbox, and we're really excited about building on it.
You know, a lot of people know BitBoy is a superhero.
He's a, you know, we've got some comic stuff going on with Rarible and some other places.
We have a game coming out, a deck-builder game, coming out on WAX.
And we're actually going to build Digital City, which where BitBoy, lives inside of our game.
We've hired master Minecraft builders,
you know, so we've got like some people that can make some really, really, really incredible stuff
coming on to build a city inside of our plots of LAND.
Definitely very excited to get that going.
And so you said that a beta for the game is coming out in the early part of next year,
do you guys have any like tentative dates for that?
What--
When are we actually looking at getting our first glimpse at being able to see the open world?
Well, that, it takes time to build an open world that's going to be fun and engaging for everyone.
We don't want to have an experience where you arrive,
you're alone,
- there's nothing to do, you're bored, - Yeah.
and you will never ever come back again.
That would be, I think, nonsense to launch a platform like this.
That all our expertise or the experience we've acquired over the years
into user-generated content and building content and running games with millions of players for many years,
including the preview of Sandbox on the mobile platform as it's an ID that's now over eight years old,
we understand that we have to craft an experience where from the very first menu, it's engaging, it's fun.
We want you to arrive into a social app where you'll meet with all other users,
socialize and then use different portal to access various content.
And we'll announce soon, hopefully, all the details about the first preseason,
which is an advanced system which will be spawning over several days,
where you as a player, you'll need to complete mission, you will need to explore,
you need to socialize with other users to--
to that goal.
At the end of that first event, you will be able to claim rewards,
claim token like SAND,
that are rewards for your engagement into the event.
That's one of the very first step of a play to earn,
but we are going to go much further along in 2021
and the year after, into adding more features, more design and complexity into those events
to make them even better for what modern players are expecting.
- Yeah - What you can already engage to right now
you or your 9-year old kid is with our Game Maker, it's no programming, no code required tool,
which lets you like drag and drop assets.
They come with a behavior and you can already make all sorts of experiences.
We have run game jams. We've run contests.
We--
And we have seen amazing creation from the community already.
As I mentioned, we have those 18 projects.
We also have IPs and brands on our platform.
The last one we announced was Smurf, where we did the LAND presale with Smurf last--
just last week, last Friday.
And it was pretty successful. We sold out everything in just less than two hours.
- And then you'll be able to play with your Smurf and create-- - Just out of the blue?
Just-- just out of the blue?
- Yes! That's a Smurf thing. - That was a Smurf joke.
- They're blue, you know. - Yeah.
- "Oh, there's land out of the blue!" - Yeah.
It's a bad Smurf joke.
- Really enjoyed the Smurf-- - No, it was fun.
Only one lady though.
- One lady Smurf. That's so-- - Let's see what--
Haha! The Smurfette.
So you will--
You'll find all sorts of experience be it either with content from IPs and brand
or user-generated content,
you'll have various type of experience,
RPG type,
finding mazes,
platformers,
etc.
That's really going to be quite exciting.
The community of Sandbox has been growing insanely recently
like just this year alone.
And it's just about one year since we started our first LAND presale.
It's amazing to see we are one of the largest Discord within the gaming industry.
We are one of the most active Telegram community as well.
For more than 4000 unique LAND owners typically,
hundreds of thousand of SAND holders, all of them are part of Sandbox community
and building the Metaverse.
Well, and I think there's gonna be a lot of cool stuff that even comes out of this.
Like, one thing that we've done is we're, you know, we've got one of the larger plots,
I mean, I think we probably are like, I don't know if we're top 10 for LAND size. We're pretty close.
We've got a 6x6, 3x3 and a 12x12,
so I know that we do have a good amount of LAND.
We are near Care Bears as well. People love Care Bears.
I love Care Bears when I was a kid.
We just need a Bitcoin Care Bear.
But the point is, is that one thing we're doing is we're actually tokenizing our LAND as well.
We're going to be, you know, leasing out certain port-- you know, parts of our parcels to other people,'
to, you know, maybe put advertising up or, you know, whatever the case may be,
I mean, I'm not exactly-- I'm not the brains of this operation for Sandbox.
You know, since I'm not immensely involved in this gaming world,
but I do have people on my team that that's their main function,
you know, is to map out our Sand--
you know, Sandbox world, and the whole thing. So,
I think that, you know, there will be other people
- that do cool stuff, unlockable content built in, - Exciting!
you know, to the LAND.
And I think one thing you said earlier was really key.
We were talking about, you know, how much money you spend in the virtual world.
Like, if I'm a dad, which I am a dad,
I spent well over $1,000 on Fortnite for my kids last year. Okay?
'Cause I got three kids, they all play, and, you know, it adds up.
Battle Pass, you gotta have.
And then they always want the latest and the greatest of the skins
and, you know, I'm like Daddy Warbucks on the Fortnite,
so I'm just aiming it out left and right.
But I would be a lot more likely to do that
if I thought that not only could I be giving my kid what they want,
but I can also be getting an ROI on that down the road
if whatever I buy them now is unavailable in the future
because one thing that Fortnite does is they cycle through seasons,
and you got different skins that are only available for different times.
And if you missed that window,
then you can't go back and get the other one,
so I think that, you know, being able to trade NFTs,
you know, down the road that can be rare and more valuable,
I think that's a big part of this whole, you know, the whole ecosystem.
That's--
It is! It is! Like,
right now,
you're still a pioneer in participating and contributing to our vision of the Metaverse
and this ecosystem.
And what you just said is really interesting because even if you're not building yourself,
you have a team,
- potentially paying people, member of the team, - I am.
so they build the stuff for you,
and then you generate a business on it by leasing some part of it,
keeping some order where you're going to run your content and use it to drive players,
to drive users and engage with your community in the space.
You'll put maybe create content that you will sell on the Marketplace as well. Why not?
Like a BitBoy character like we did with the Binance Cyborg,
or with the Care Bears stuff or the Smurfs that we are selling as Premium maybe
because there's many new business model that--
and a whole virtual world economy happening around it
and we're just scratching the surface around it
because right now it's essentially content-driven,
but with SAND token, it can be also related to staking to stake SAND into your LAND
to generate some reward, some incentive for people to participate, etc.
We have many ideas around it already.
Yeah, it's exciting. I think it's fun times to be involved with this stuff and to be
on the edge of such cutting edge, you know, technology or gaming,
like it's really exciting, you know, for me who's not really been super verse--
you know, well versed with gaming to kind of be jumping in and understand--
I think that the key is just understanding like it's not gaming for fun,
it's gaming for relationships.
Like, that really is what everything has turned into, like you said,
gaming is the new social media. I mean,
when you talked about those numbers that compare
number of people gaming to the number of people on social media,
like it really, really puts it into perspective.
So, Sebastien,
last thing I just want to, you know, I want you to be able to give people what is--
if you want to be involved in Sandbox, in any capacity, what is their next step?
Join our community.
Join our Discord, our Telegram.
Chat with our members.
They will-- They are all welcoming.
They will-- They really have this passion for creating content, for creating game
and for like explaining what's the value of contributing to the virtual world for you,
what's the value of NFT,
so you'll learn great tool, you'll make new friends,
you will potentially be interested to create content
supported by our Artist Fund or Game Maker Fund,
and potentially change--
it will change the way you'll see about digital asset
and potentially change your life.
We've already started changing lives of hundreds of people who,
for example, because of COVID, they were jobless,
they found their passion like, "Hey! I can make a game without having learned programming."
I won-- they won prizes at the game jam.
They won prizes as they were getting involved in translating or completing bounties,
helping onboarding new users, etc.
So it's really developing a whole new--
I wouldn't say-- it's almost like the population of a new country.
There's first settlers that comes to this virtual world
and are building the amazing content in it,
and potentially we will also benefit from the growth of the platform.
So that's something very different from traditional virtual worlds.
You know, on virtual world of Fortnite, you don't get paid.
You don't earn anything by playing and contributing to the success of the game.
Right.
Yeah, exactly. It's exciting to see it all come together.
And you guys make sure to go join the community for Sandbox.
Really excited to be part of this even in a small way
and looking forward to see it develop.
Sebastien, thank you so much for joining us today.
My pleasure.
Thank you, everyone. See you in our community!
And welcome to the Metaverse.
Alright. Welcome to the Metaverse!
That's all we got. Be blessed.
BitBoy out.