Hello Hivees,
Today I want to talk about a new Blockchain videogame that promises great things.

Do you know the movie “Ready Player One”?
Have you ever played Minecraft?
Do you know “Second Life”?
This game will be much, much more!

In 2017 I found out Decentraland, a digital metaverse where you could build your virtual world, your avatar and meet many players.
At that time, Decentraland was in full development phase and it took almost three years to actually see the first version of the game.

Decentraland is an application that rotates on Ethereum and has its MANA token to purchase goods and services on the platform, this token has remained stably among the top 100 Coins on Coinmarketcap in the past three years.

This video game promised to revolutionize Blockchain gaming, and it actually does; many other projects are following in Decentraland's footsteps.

TOKENS AND NOT FUNGIBLE TOKENS ON DECENTRALAND

The videogame uses Blockchain technology and NFTs to allow the users to create unique objects such as houses or objects, or own a land in the game.
In addition there is a MANA token which allows the purchase of goods and services on the game.

All the lands available in the game have been sold in the presale and now, if you want to buy a land, you have to go to the Opensea marketplace, but the land has an average cost of 5 Ethereum.

You can also buy lands by other users in game, paying them with MANA token, but, even in this case, prices are very high.

I think there is a lot of speculation about these lands, many have bought them as an investment and sell them at high prices.
This has always made me think that this is a good project, even considering that the MANA token performed better than most altcoins during the Bear market of 2018 and 2019.

THE LAUNCH OF THE GAME IN 2019

Finally at the end of 2019 it was possible to create your own avatar and enter the world of Decentraland.

I was very fascinated by the graphics and another incredible thing was to see the diversity of landscapes and buildings within the world.

You can relax inside a Zen garden, or meet new people inside futuristic cities.
Each area has its different characteristics, has its own music and sounds that reproduce the surrounding environment.

WHAT CAN YOU DO INTO DECENTRALAND?

We can do practically everything: we can simply walk and explore the world, we can interact with objects or other players, we can chat, participate in events, but not only ... the power of this video game also allows you to create your own business and earn money.

Developers are building casinos where we can play many different games using MANA tokens, we could also create schools where users come to learn something new, we can play chess tournaments where players pay a registration fee...
The possibilities are endless, just use our imagination!

WHAT DID I REALLY DO?

First of all, we need Metamask to be able to log in, then we can create our avatar in few simple steps.

Once we have created our character we can finally enter to explore Decentraland, but at the moment the platform is very very poor.
There are very few online players and there are very few activities available.

We also have a tool to furnish our land, but obviously we need land to upload our creations and, as we have seen, the lands cost a lot of money.

Another limit of this game is still the low participation of other players, in fact as shown by “Dappradar”, the active players per day are about 50 and the trend seems to be falling compared to the numbers recorded in late 2018.

WHAT DO I THINK OF DECENTRALAND ?

Certainly this game has brought new possibilities to Blockchain and gamers, but it seems that development is going very slow.
This is understandable, it is certainly a very ambitious and difficult project to realize, and it is not easy to emerge among the thousands of video games already existing.

The low number of players and the high cost for a land have led me to new games, but I will certainly continue to keep an eye on this project in the hope that it can grow much more and become a point of reference in the world of Blockchain video games.

THE SANDBOX, THE NEW METAVERSE IN COLLABORATION WITH ATARI

"The Sandbox" was born in the wake of Decentraland.
Sandbox is a term that is used today in gaming to describe that category of mixed games between open world and role-playing games.
A clear example of Sandbox games are: Grand Theft Auto, The Sims, Saints Row, Fallout ...

But the real Sandbox game was born with "Pixowl", a virtual world where players could create, own and monetize their voxel creations.

In 2018 Animoca Brands acquired the rights of Pixowl and gave life to a new Blockchain version of this game: "The Sandbox".
The Animoca Brands franchise is one of the largest in the world with more than 40 million downloads and more than one million active users.

Thanks to this important gaming company, the project "The sandbox" was developed with an incredible speed, in fact it is already active alpha version (private) and by mid-2020, the game will be open to all.

But not only that, important partnerships have been established that have brought several millions into the coffers of Animoca to continue the development and certainly these collaborations will greatly help the spread of the game.

Among the first partners of "The sandbox", there were Square enix, B Cryptos and True Global Ventures.

But recently a gaming titan decided to collaborate; who am I talking about? ATARI!
Atari, the gaming giant born in 1972, that gave life to evergreen games like Pong or the latest Neverwinter Nights and The Witcher just to name a few.

Atari’s overbearing entry into the Blockchain is an important signal; I hope that gaming will make Blockchain minstream.

I'VE BOUGHT MY LAND ON THE SANDBOX

This game is still under development, but currently we can participate in the presale of the lands and exclusive items with a strong discount compared to the prices that will be after the game launch.

I tried to buy my land during the second presale, but I logged in late and the available lands were sold out after about an hour since the presale launch!

I didn’t think there was already so much interest in this game, so I decided to register for the third presale.
On March 31, began the third round of lands sale and I connected in advance to buy the land as soon as possible

Once again the participation was elevated and it was not easy to buy a land, indeed it was a real battle. I bought a land close to the main land of ATARI for 0.3 ETH, I think it could be a strategic position on the map, a meeting point for many players.

Later, I wanted to buy another land between Pong and another famous game of ATARI, “Rollercoaster Tycoon”, but the huge participation of users sent in crash the platform that’s been down for a long time.

I was able to reconnect with the game after a few hours, but all the lands had already been sold.

I will try again in the fourth and final round of presale to conquer some more lands, because I think that this video game can soon become a great reality.

WHY WOULD THE SANDBOX SURPASS DECENTRALAND?

I’ve tried both platforms and I have to say that "The sandbox" has many points in favor of Decentraland:

• Speed of development and a very intense roadmap in 2020
• Behind the project there are important video game houses
• The “object creation” editor is very intuitive and simple, using VoxEdit developed by Google. Also there is an editor for creating video games to insert inside the world of "The sandbox" .
• The map allows you to insert logos to attract visitors and better understand what we can find in each district. It reminds me the "Million Dollar Homepage" and I prefer it compared to the map of Decentraland
• There is already a marketplace where we can buy the creations of the best voxel artists

CONCLUSION

The Blockchain is creating a new gaming concept, the emergence of new projects and investments by video games companies are a clear example of this.

It is not easy to imagine now what could become "The sandbox", the developments are endless and we can really create anything.
A very interesting thing is to see the arrival of Atari and other big videogame houses in this new philosophy of Gaming, but especially of decentralization.

Why should these multimillion-dollar companies renounce the centralization of their power and risk losing huge profits?

Maybe because the Blockchain revolution will be unavoidable, so we cannot deny that, but we must try to be part of it as soon as possible

How will Atari, "The sandbox" and the world of video games develop thanks to the Blockchain?

We’ll find out in the next episode... Stay tuned!