🏗️ The Builders' Challenge: Looking Back at the Journey

[TSBCreators]

Dear Creators,

As we close this chapter of the Builders’ Challenge, we want to celebrate the journey we’ve all been on together. Throughout these events, your creativity and passion have shone brightly, contributing to the vibrant and inspiring community that is The Sandbox.

Despite the challenges we’ve faced, the Builders’ Challenge has still achieved remarkable success, with over 420 new experiences published during Builders’ Challenge 2 alone and over 300 in the first challenge. Once the final rankings and rewards are released, we will have distributed a total of 3,000,000 SAND across both events to support the creativity and innovation of our creator community.

We are currently finalizing the rankings and rewards for the remaining weeks, starting with the rewards distribution for weeks 5 and 6 tomorrow, September 3rd. We know you are eager to see the results, and we’re committed to providing them as soon as possible. Rest assured, we will keep you updated on the timeline and ensure that everything is handled with care and fairness.

What’s Next?
We want to ensure that you feel empowered to influence the direction of the next iteration of the Builders’ Challenges, which will likely take a different format based on your feedback. So share your ideas and suggestions in the thread below. Whether it’s ideas for new themes, reward structures, ways to make the Builders’ Challenge more engaging and fair, or an entirely new format and name, we want to hear from you!

Looking ahead, we’re taking your feedback seriously as we plan for the future. We are committed to making improvements and ensuring that your voice is heard as we continue to build together.

While we will engage with you more directly on shaping the next chapter of the Builders’ Challenge, we encourage you first to ensure that you take the Creators Survey which aims to get a better overall understanding of your experience as a creator in The Sandbox. This is an important first step, and we need your insights.

Read more about the Creators Survey here.

Thank you once again for being a part of this journey. We look forward to the exciting developments ahead as we continue to grow and evolve together.

Best regards,
The Sandbox Team

[Gikis]

First, establish a reward system similar to YouTube’s Click-Through-Rate, so my performance doesn’t impact other studios. If I perform great and 10 other studios perform great - we all get paid similar amounts.

Make this challenge continuous, keeping it active full-time, but ensure rewards are distributed strictly on a bi-weekly basis without delays. This allows us to focus consistently without interruptions or fear.

Then:
1.Track NFT gateway activations using Unique IDs. Ensure unique metadata to prevent one NFT from being used on multiple accounts within a 48-72 hour window, inflating numbers.
2.Track player visits.
3.Track time spent.

The best-case scenario would be if you added in-game microtransactions and tracked which games generate good transaction rates and have a high active player base. However, I understand that this might be too much to ask for in the short term (within the next 3-6 months).

[AlcyStudio]

• Change the vision, the competition gives the impression that we’re taking from you what you could/should have had.
  It’s no longer reward, it’s stealing we need rewards for the best, not a competition between creators .

• Have an in-game Tips system so players can reward designers directly, Even if it means having a in game currency that can be bought in sand and converted into sand.

• As suggested in the creator form, have a system of TSB creator account badges (gold, silver…) and let this have a small influence on the rewards. Give value to this account to encourage creators to be irreproachable.

• For accounts without badges, TSB validation of which experiences are eligible to participate

• Enhance the value of lands by adding a bonus for premium lands + a bonus based on the number of lands used per XP

• Don’t just showcase a few featured experiences, try to send players to each experience and see the metrics for continuing to showcase them, in the same style as youtube algorithm.

• An IG learderboard

• A solution for managing contests and rewards directly from the TSB site

[VeePyre]

Hello @Ebooks,

This thread is not meant for discussing the ongoing Builders’ Challenge, its rankings, and its rewards and distribution. Please feel free to ask your questions in the relevant threads dedicated to this topic!

Here, we encourage everyone to offer their ideas and suggestions for future improvements as we start working towards the next iteration.

[POkace]

It is difficult for most creators to run their own community.
TSB team should provide a system to link players and creators, which will be more interesting.
BC2 is a big event, but players don’t know anything about it.
This event should be used to attract people.

[PickaxeMaster]

Hopefully a lot of lessons were learnt during these 2 past Builders Challenges, the idea is good, it needs a lot of improvement, but the concept is good.

As for general ideas on the next Builders Challenge:

• Create a UGC Council that rotates each BC, the UGC Council is based on the Top 25 Creators of the last BC. That Council will ensure to have a diversified and curated team for improvements. Let this UGC Council have some weight on BC decisions, this will shorten the gap between the community, creators and TSB team.
• Create a Player Council based on the Top 25 Players that have visited the most experiences during the past Builders Challenge. The Player Council will give a diversified and curated feedback on what’s working, on what Players want to see more, what features they need to make their play time more meaningful. This feedback will help Creators to make their games better every season and help Sandbox to build features and mechanics from that feedback.
• Create Tiers, like a any sort of competition, not all teams are all put together in the same league, this will allow a more controlled growth and Creators can forecast better their upcoming expenses and rewards. Each Tier should have a Maximum and a Minimum payout.
• Create even more Tiers for different Categories: Adventure, Sports, Resource Management, Fashion, etc.
• For the Player POV and taking in consideration that Sandbox still has a strong P2E culture, games get less plays as players maximize their gains, by publishing a template and running around there for hours is more profitable than actually playing any published games. Therefore the need of Tiers, the current model incentivizes Players to play less and farm the reward system.
• Given the low amount of players and community size, experiences need to be curated/validated like it was Game Jam, this will prevent the competition from being flooded with empty maps / duplicates / templates. The curation can be aided by the UGC Council as part of their responsibilities. UGC Council members should get 50 SAND per review (This is a lot of of work).
• A report button should be added to the Experience page, this would trigger an investigation on the Experience, enforcing prevention rather than reaction.
• Experiences that are featured in any sort of event by the Sandbox, either it’s Experience of the Week, a Brand activation or any other format that benefits from Sandbox marketing, should be excluded from the specific timeframe they’ve been featured.
• There are currently Badges that have been earned by Players, starting all the way back from Alpha Season 1, the amount of Badges earned is a metric on how the Player is invested in the platform. This will prevent bots with newly created accounts to boost stats up and real players with proven play time from badges should weight more on metrics.
• Creators should be incentivized to collaborate not to compete, this will aid to reach interoperability and will extend content beyond lands, the goal is to maximize content, fun and engagement with the community. Similar metrics on how Ambassadors get compensated could be used to reward Creator collaborations. The more events, the merrier.
• Sandbox User Acquisition strategy should be highly refined to drive Users into the Builders Challenge, the Creators are the best User Retention tool any UGC platform has (YouTube, Roblox, Spotify, TikTok - It’s the Creators that retain the audience, the platform is just responsible for acquiring new users).
• Have a Player Challenge simultaneously which involves visiting as many Experiences as possible, Rating, giving comments. Players earn badges and are placed in a leaderboard for how many Experiences they have played. Allowing the EP system to be used by Creators will prevent Players from rigging the system, as it will be required to complete all the quests inside any Experience to be considered complete/played. Leaderboard payout structure is based on Amount of Games Played/Amount of EP collected. Players can now earn SAND from UGC competitions and from the Player Challenge. With the final Leaderboards, Players earn Badges, that then will weight on the Builders Challenge performance (Player curation).
• Give proper tools for Creators to run and host competitions, allowing them to scale and effectively retain users: Claim/Distribution of NFT’s/SAND, Experience Leaderboards, EP system, Save feature, Variables interoperability, spend SAND ingame, API’s. These are mandatory to make any game minimally viable.
• And again, a proper funneling system for New Users on the Sandbox to discover UGC games and communities. This is one of the most important implementations tha tneed to happen. If you look in the Discord feedback channel, there’s plenty of feedback/complaints on Users that are winning 2/3 SAND per official event, what if they knew UGC is paying A LOT more right now than official TSB events? It’s a wasted User Retention opportunity everyday.

Hopefully these thoughts are helpful and would like to see any of them implemented, even if takes times to develop and program some of the features/tools, I’d rather wait on a road map and know things are coming.

Congratulations to everyone that participated, kudus to all Creators that played fair.

[Sapperlight]

I’ve been advocating a Players Challenge in conjunction with the BC since the first one started. I proposed some different ideas from you, but to the same end. I agree that this or something like it needs to happen; TSB brings the players in, and we entertain them and keep them.

I agree that being Featured is an enormous boon and an incredibly unfair advantage.

I had a similar thought on the tier system. My initial thought was to have three tiers: a tier for studios (most competitive, highest rewards), a tier for solo creators (competitive, medium rewards), and a tier for beginners or passive experiences (lowest rewards, maybe just a set amount for participating). Since there is no real way to discern between studios and solo creators, creators would opt-in to their category. This is where an entry form could be used to make it an active process. The first experience is “free”; every other experience from the same creator would get vetted, perhaps by your UGC Council.

[Sandsquad]

Hey @VeePyre I completed the survey few days ago and now got another invitation for the same survey with the 50-100 sand rewards lol… or is it a scam? Email looks legit

[VeePyre]

Hi!

I would imagine that the email you refer to is our bi-weekly creators newsletter. This always comes out on a wednesday every second week, so there will be some delay in the communication.

If it is indeed our newsletter, then it is of course legit! You do not gain any additional rewards for doing the survey more than once, however.

[Sandsquad]

Oh crap! And I already created 25 accounts and filled again! nooo way!
… kidding

[Sandsquad]

Hehe I haven’t even seen there were some rewards on the first one

[VeePyre]

True dedication

Thank you for your time!

[Dankoyy]

@TSBCreators

Builders’ Challenge has still achieved remarkable success, with over 420 new experiences published during Builders’ Challenge 2 alone and over 300 in the first challenge.

So that the @TSBCreators are aware of the UGC’s Creators community perspective.

There was no clear guideline that the number of new experiences published was one of the TSB’s objectives of Builders’ Challenge 1 or 2.

In reality, our only guideline was the number of players and average hours.

Therefore, for the Creators’ perspective, the TSB’s objective of the program was to evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and strategies for attracting players.

Therefore, the number of experiences published would have been on a much higher scale if this objective had been clear to the Creators. My team, friends, network, and hundreds of others Creators left LANDs unpublished because we didn’t know this was one of the objectives of the BC program.

In future editions, make the objectives completely clear so we can help TSB achieve its goals in the best way possible.

Please Creators, don’t be upset with those who made multiple Launchs, as apparently they did the right thing.

Thank you.
Dankoyy

[SirAlokin]

for point 2: a non aggregated data will be great, know who play your experience without ask a screenshot will be amazing!!

[biversen]

The idea of the Builder’s Challenge is good in concept but needs a lot of improvement. My suggestions

• First of all, 3rd party Boosters that will affect the ranking should be removed.

If we think of this as a league, the ranking should be organized according to the raw points received. The team that makes the most transfers or plays the most International matches will not get extra points in any league. This system is open to manipulation, the results would not be fair and would discourage builders from the system.

• UGC experiences used in events and highlighted experiences will be enough for builders for this league. This shows the success of the builder and motivates them. In this way, more UGC experiences can be attracted to participate in events.

• A group of auditors should be formed. their job should be to go inside the experiences and check the experiences.

Is it really an experience or just a project thrown together for the sake of it?

Is there a spammer in the experience? In other words, is the experience entered with multi accounts and just waiting to increase the play time and number?

Or is the experience really active? (for example: there are 5 people inside but only 1 person is waiting. this is fine. But if 5 out of 5 people are AFK, this is a problem).

• A UGC council should be created. These people should be influential in BC decisions. They should also be from the creators of the countries they are in so that they can be in better connection with their communities.

• Experiences should be divided into two categories as MP and SP. they should also be divided into categories (Obby, Race, Action Adventure etc…) and a separate prize pool should be created for each category.

• The General Category should continue, but the prize pool should be reduced. the part that will be allocated from here can be distributed in subcategories. in this way, the income distribution of the builders will be a little more equalized.

• Organizing events with big prizes does not bring users to the Sandbox. The general complaint is that too many rewards go to spam or bot accounts. The job of the Sandbox system is to bring new users into the system. But this way only loses big money. The prizes distributed in these events can be distributed to builders. Because it is the Builders who will bring in real players who will invest in the Sandbox Ecosystem. The BC system is a good tool for this. different tools can be developed over time. But I don’t think events with big prizes for players are the right tool.

• An area should be created on the website where Builders can add events. This way, instead of searching for events on social media platforms, players can go to the page and see all the events together.

• The Experience Statistics page should be improved. Currently it is very primitive and gives very limited data.

[SirAlokin]

Not agree with that

A UGC council should be created. These people should be influential in BC decisions. They should also be from the creators of the countries they are in so that they can be in better connection with their communities

We saw that everyone attack other to favourite they preferred creators… they aren’t superpartes.
.

[biversen]

If done correctly there will be no problem.

On the contrary, it will be beneficial. People like to communicate with people who speak the same language, know and understand the community.

But the people who will be on this council must be formed correctly and include the right people.

19 Eyl 2024 Per 13:41 tarihinde Sir Alokin via The Sandbox - Creators <notifications@sandbox.discoursemail.com> şunu yazdı:

[Sapperlight]

I would like to see more consistent and purposeful communication from the team (and TSB in general). The BC ended 3 weeks ago, and we haven’t had a wrap-up AMA. Having a forum thread is no substitute for pointed conversation, where we can put a face with a name and realize that there are real people on the other end of the conversation.

For a 10-week BC, I would have 3 planned communication events.
-Kick-off AMA, held a few days after the announcement but at least a week before the start date. In addition to the facts of the challenge, I would clearly outline the vision and goals of the BC, any anticipated problems such as entire team being gone during holidays, and significant improvements or changes from previous BCs.
-Intermediate Progress Report at the half-way point. This could be an AMA, but it could also be a direct communication from the team on how things are going. A technique is to use the initial PowerPoint presentation with highlights and comments in a different color to show that the team is monitoring and tracking what’s going on. Specifics can be addressed in the forum since it tends to be fluid at that time.
-Wrap-up AMA, held no later than one week after the conclusion of the challenge. This can take several forms. I prefer the AAR (after action review) approach, where we look at our original vision and goals and talk about how we did, highlighting successes and challenges. The idea is that attendees leave the discussion feeling that the team has heard their concerns, there are some thoughts on improvements going forward, and that we can all celebrate the successes.

In addition to that, I think we need at least monthly if not bi-weekly updates on here on what is happening. Seb and TSB main social states that announcements were made at Token 2049, but none of that (except AS4) is shared with the rest of us. Even knowing generally when the next BC is occurring would be helpful, especially if it will take place during the latter part of December when many people are on holidays.

[theJoncrow]

My …

1 - opt in checkbox to challenges. Time frame entry, just like gj.
2 -vet all game entries pre event launch to determine valid entries.
3 - sp, mp game type categories and dedicated prize pools
4 - better proprortioning of prize pool
5 - crystal clear rules.
6 - tsb environment that lets us run and manage our own contests, submissions, establish winning criteria through rules system in gm.
7 - access management of contests from our pub pages. X screen shots are far too easy to mod.

[Sapperlight]

Greetings, Team. It’s been quiet around here lately. Would it be possible to get some updates on a few of the items listed below? It doesn’t necessarily need to be specific, but it would be useful to know that things are progressing and that the team is working on items that are important to the Creator community.

-Will there be another Builder’s Challenge this year? With Alpha Season 4 running from now until the holiday season, we need to be able to budget our time between building and playing.
-Will there be a Game Jam before year end?
-What progress is the team making on “the form”, ie those experiences that were omitted from the rewards list for Builder’s Challenge 2?
-Are there any updates on The Creator Program, and when should we expect to see implementation begin?
-Is there a general timeline for the release of GM 0.11? As Creators, this has an effect on the first two bullets.

While the rewards for AS4 aren’t earth shattering, I suspect most of us will be active in the season to celebrate our fellow Creators and to see what others are building. Having the ability to plan and develop timelines with the above information would be very valuable.

Thank you.