(Updated) Weekly Rankings Update: Builder’s Challenge N°2 – Week 3+4 ⭐

[YuelWolf]

First, we deeply appreciate that you are taking our feedback into account to improve the Builder Challenge, and without a doubt, a step forward has been taken. However, there are still two very serious issues evident in the current ranking.

1. The current Top 1 is a completely broken and poorly designed experience. I have already submitted a detailed report through the form with all the evidence showing how a studio with no social media presence, a Telegram channel used only for announcements with zero user interaction, and no comments on some of their experience pages has managed to take the top spot. It’s as simple as testing their experiences, where the only comments in the chat are about how the experience doesn’t work. Adding to this, it’s clear from analyzing their user behavior during the second bi-weekly period that they dramatically increased their numbers without any reasonable explanation (no campaigns, no relevant announcements, etc.). Finally, without a rewards system, there is no justification for the average playtime of this experience—data that The Sandbox should already have from all its events with users.
2. It’s great that HKINDEXGAME has dropped from the top positions, but it’s completely absurd to find it back at rank 10. The least that could be expected is a ban for the duration of the season. If what was found were associations with Guilds, as we’ve been informed, it’s clear that these were maliciously made to artificially boost engagement in experiences that are clearly not designed to be played for such a long time.

For the security of the studios and developers that are investing a lot of time, money, and effort into building real engagement, seeing these types of experiences take important positions is entirely disheartening.

[Paklos]

Hi @VeePyre, thank you for your attention to this topic. I don’t want to discuss the rough handling of the rules right now, but with this new system, a new problem might arise. From what you’re saying, there will be a lot of focus on “fake players,” and the community itself will be the one making the reports. Let’s assume an extreme case… If someone dislikes me and they send their guild in my experience the numbers would be inflated. If this person makes a report, I would be the one in trouble since I’m responsible for my experience… This method could be used to disqualify potential top players in the rankings in order to climb the ladder.
As a creator, I would only be happy to see high numbers, but how could I justify such numbers if I wasn’t the one who created them, and it was a scheme to get me disqualified?

[TobiNCraft]

@Paklos This comment is spot on. I wouldn’t be surprised if guild members create fake evidence to harm their competitors. I have observed this occurring with major brands like Amazon, where sellers purchase their competitor’s products to leave negative reviews, ultimately leading to the competitor’s account being closed. So I hope TSB has a plan to prevent this, Otherwise, the environment for the BC will become increasingly toxic.

[VeePyre]

Hello @BagOGames, good to see you!

The rewards for weeks 3+4 are planned for the end of this week.

[VeePyre]

Hi @DarckinITA. We do not recognize bots as organic engagement, and thus we will take action on this in one way or the other.

Unless evidence is glaringly unambiguous, we evaluate each case individually based on a mix of data, documentation, and human evaluation. In some cases, we may simply remove artificial players and their impact on the experience. In other cases, we may find signs or evidence that the creator is actively pursuing this method of boosting their numbers.

[DarckinITA]

ok so you are practically unable to evaluate the thing.
I say this because, based on what you are saying, if all this is really evaluated, but it isn’t, then many experiences, always talking about the 50 possible ones for you to “look at”, would be excluded.
Also because from being clearly “ambiguous” they then become proof of your “work” which was not carried out correctly, not even under your own rules.
I think that if there is anyone who doesn’t respect the rules, the first ones are you when you see the ranking.
However, I see that many have used the form, so many numbers! Surely you have a lot of work and as they say at the beginning, holidays are involved, so another week wasted.

[VeePyre]

Hi @Paklos, good to see you here!

I understand your concern. While it is technically possible for someone to launch a bot attack on your experience with the purpose of getting you banned, I am not worried about this.

As I mentioned in my reply to the user above, we review individual cases with a mix of data, documentation, and human evaluation to make up for the things that a machine can’t do.

We aim to be fair, and this extends just as much to those who are under investigation.

Regardless, as with everything that involves humans, mistakes can happen and you are always allowed to disagree with our decisions. Thus, you are also, by the rules, provided a way to appeal any decisions we made. If you are able to defend efficiently why you think your disqualification was wrong, a reverse is possible in some cases

[HKINDEXGAME]

We’re grateful for your feedback and concerns about the recent Builders’ Challenge 2 (BC2) results.

Following the announcement of Week 3+4, there’s been a lot of discussion around our rankings. We chose to fully cooperate with The Sandbox’s investigation and remained silent to avoid influencing the outcome. Now that changes have been made to the rankings, we are disappointed with the decision, but we’ll accept it and move forward. We hope The Sandbox will refine the rules for future Builders Challenges to ensure a fair playing field.

Addressing your concerns about BC2:

1. We wanted to use branded assets as boosters, but technical issues with The Sandbox made it impossible. We have reported the issue that using the same NFT with few copies owned (not instances in GM) in various experiences will block game publishing.
2. We worked with gaming guilds in China and they assured us that no bots, PC farms, or zombie accounts were used to inflate rankings.
3. Players pausing gameplay is out of our control. The BC rules didn’t specify penalties for long pauses. We need clearer guidelines.
4. Large player numbers are achievable in China with 1.3B people and 500M gamers. We believe achieving large player numbers is entirely feasible with the right strategy.
5. Cultural differences lead to unique player IDs in China/SEA, like QQ numbers and WeChat IDs. This isn’t a concern.

We created 6 games at start and used diverse strategies, like showcasing at China’s cultural events, collaborating with gaming guilds and offering @index_academyhk workshops to students to acquire them to The Sandbox ecosystem.

Games closer to Chinese culture and more promotion in China tend to attract more players. This will guide our future ops.

The Chinese gaming market exceeded $300B in 2023 - we aim to leverage this opportunity.

We hope this clarifies any remaining doubts. If not, please accept our apologies once again. We don’t intend to dwell on this further, as different perspectives can exist on the same issue.

We’ve dedicated ourselves to supporting The Sandbox’s growth in China/SEA since 2020. But like other creators, we’ve faced challenges.

In summary:

Our BC2 strategies were within the guidelines at the time. Our main goal wasn’t the prize, but to experiment and understand our future direction.

We hope The Sandbox invests more in ecosystem development and provides a clearer roadmap to align participant strategies.

Thank you for your support. We’re committed to the platform’s continued success.

[SirAlokin]

Hi, I don’t know the reason of ban, but I played your experience in past events and I liked it! Hoping in a best resolution for you!

[theJoncrow]

Hey HKINDEX, thanks for your voice.
I don’t know enough about gaming guilds, so my apologies if what i state is wrong, but how do gaming guilds genuinely contribute to healthy growth of the TSB ecosystem if i can simply enlist them to boost my game?

Your point about China and having access to a large population base is acknowledged, however, in light of that information, there is no way for most developers to counter this from a player perspective. What it means is that for every contest going forward, your games will always be at the top of the list which also gets your experiences continually featured or trending.
I get wanting visits to a game, but doesnt this kind of artifically boost your stats and make it harder for anyone else to rise to the top?

After this last round in the bc, i have stopped all contests in my games as i cant really compete at all with the player counts you bring in through guilds, and as a solo developer with limited resources, will never be able to attain those lofty positions without being featured in the main page or without being in an event.

Case in point, my golf game. From weeks 3 to 6, i hit #35 and #26 only because i was in an event. The moment the event ended, and i lost visibility on the tsb site my plays went plummeting to single digits, yet the top games, guilds or not continue to sit with high visibility just reinforcing this imbalance. I was fortunate to have been featured for the month in the event and benefited from it, but i do feel for those who had no visibility and had to push extremely hard to get lower placements in the LB

My plan had been to put out 1000 Sand rewards for weeks 7 and 8, but seeing how difficult it was to reach #26 even with the event boost, i knew that i would be putting out more sand rewards than i could possibly bring in, and with the severe imbalance in the top positions and pay outs dropping off drastically from position 4 onwards it would result in my ending up in the red with losses.

I dont know what the answer is, perhaps give out less rewards in my end, but i just cant compete with the top positions in terms of guild use and / or sand pay out.

I cant imagine how anyone could survive full time working in this environment, or why they would take on so much stress when the playing field is far from level. For me, continuing to dip my toes in part time, and kind of treating it as more of a hobby is much better for my mental and emotional health.

[Mangudai]

Well said! Same goes here. As a solo game creator, my only chance is to create a social following and a highly polished and exciting experience that would get noticed and featured by the Sandbox. I was fortunate enough to have my experience listed in the featured tab, that game my game a boost, managing to rank in top 100. Still, the rewards are pretty low considering the amount of hours I put into making the games, but it’s better than nothing and motivates me to keep creating and hope that things will get better.

I am a big fan of The Sandbox and the tools they provide for creators, however I feel weird about rewarding players for entering my experience and I would like to have genuine players that simply enjoy my games instead of players logging in just to grab the rewards.

I feel this Builder’s Challenge is more like an arms race that creates a weird relation between creators and players.

[TobeyU]

I believe we have to recognise that while the tools that are given to everyone is fair, in a sense that all game making tools are available to everyone, we have to also accept that the mechanics(rewards etc) that different creators and studios use are sometimes beyond what the platform can control.

For myself, I can only work on Game Maker, I’ve not opened VoxEdit. But I can’t expect to say that since I can’t use it, I have to expect everyone to not use it as well.

Same goes for offering rewards. While it may seem unfair for some studios or creators to offer seemingly outsized rewards, it’s fair to say that they’ve also undertaken that risk, and therefore deserve the rewards.

Point is, you can still create games for people who want to just come in and enjoy, but you can’t use that as a yardstick to say everyone should do it.

Case in point, I still think that the platform doesn’t fully support the ability to make this a full time job and to no fault of theirs. I’d say that there’s an inherent issue with the platform IF the metaverse hype is still around. But it’s died down, and this is what reality looks like. If a current business model is unable to sustain itself even with all these rewards, then it’s a good time to rethink business strategy.

This is the 1st cycle for business lull in the metaverse, but it’ll not be the only one.