I’m glad that I’m not the only one with the same problem, but I’m not glad that this is happening at all. I don’t see my game in the list either, maybe I did something wrong and someone can help me. And in general, it would be nice if there was an indicator on the game page that would help to see whether the game falls under the conditions of participation in the builders challenge or not.
Absolutely the same issue. Just in case, I’m attaching a link, and I can also add a screenshot of the stats if needed. Can someone help with this? Now I’m not even sure if it’s worth investing resources into a new game, or if it will also fail to appear in the rankings like the first one.
Hi, my stats didn’t count either, although here are the screenshots of my stats and so I have the starting quests and all the other prerequisites
Investigate the top 1-2 spots immediately because there’s a good possibility that something fishy is happening there.
I hope I’m not too late, as I have the same issue as some of the people above. Have you received any assistance yet? I’d also like to find out what’s wrong with my games. Here’s the links:
@PeaJay My experience is also not in the list, can you please check this too?
The Sandbox - Climbing race EX
For weeks 1-2, I’d run little twitter contests to win NFTs and I’d had decent results, but for weeks 3-4, no marketing and therefore, 0 classified experiences.
It would be nice to have a system that proposes experiences randomly, perhaps based on time spent or player ratings too, so as not to propose empty experiences.
I have 7 published experiences, even if the name gives the impression, I’m not a studio, I work alone.
I’m not complaining because most of my experiences were either created via GMF, or I got rewards thanks to GJ.
I don’t see any levers to attract external players, I don’t really like this system which forces us to fight between creators to be the one who will attract the most players, generally by offering the most rewards, I’d like people to want to play my games.
This BC system is good if there are a lot of players, so exploit/bot/hack worries won’t be a problem.
I understand TSB’s need to attract external players in exchange for rewards, but I feel it creates a lot of frustration.
TSB’s external image is sometimes associated with scam, and all our twitter contests are pushing us a little further in that direction, with the play2earn side taking over too much from the gaming side.
I think it’s clear that the current BC system is not working. Too few players means that the system is far too easily rigged with bots or just getting friends to AFK in your game. Currently you could have 10 accounts AFK for 10 hours each day and you would come Top 3. The UGC systems that the BC is based off (Roblox, Fortnite, Spotify etc.) have 1000x the user-base, making them 1000x harder to rig.
Beyond that, there is little to no emphasis on creating quality games, it’s all about trying to get the most hours out of players as possible. We have some really fun and unique game ideas but there is no point in developing them because they won’t perform well in the BC. The quality of games is dropping significantly, there is no time to develop great games, and not enough of a reward. Players only play for the highest reward, they don’t really care how good the game is.
We think if TSB is to grow and get more players, there needs to be an emphasis on creating good games first. There are some brilliant games by top studios way down the list here, yet some of the top performing games have very limited gameplay and basic assets. This clearly shows a fault in how the BC is set up, something really needs to be re-evaluated here, or a lot of the best studios will be forced to leave.
This for sure wouldn’t be allowed in any Game Jam.
Tactics like this should be discouraged by TSB.
Anyone that thinks its right wont ever be part of the community in my eyes.
Points made by both you and @TuschayStudios highlight what I think is one of the biggest problems with both Builders Challenges, and that’s that the TSB staff failed to anticipate the loopholes. In the BC1 AMA, I asked two very specific questions about them (unique players in BC1 and AFK), and the response was that those were good questions, and they would look at them. If they did, they didn’t do anything about them.
How do you run a contest of this magnitude and not look at 2nd and 3rd order effects? After the quick off AMAs for both BCs we could see the loopholes immediately; how did the TSB staff miss them?
Let’s ask the question again–What is the point of the Builder’s Challenge?
From what I’ve seen so far: BC, GMF, and Game Jam
- The Game Jam really allows for the highest quality experiences to be developed in the least amount of time and with a less significant sand contribution for TSB.
- The GMF allowed for large experiences/beautiful concepts, but the deadlines were long and often the version upgrades required reworking a large part of the experiences. I think it was impossible to make the projects profitable for TSB.
- The BC reward system encourages prioritizing the quantity of experience over quality and the time spent in-game over the quality of gameplay. Overall, this lowers the quality and fun. However, it is the only system that provides rewards over time, thus allowing previous experiences to become profitable.
Therefore, I think rebalancing the BC rewards towards the GJ (more experience rewarded and better rewards) could help improve the overall quality of experiences and gradually reintegrate the BC when there are more players attracted by the quality of the games.
is it fair to copy and paste multiple times one EP to get rewards i am sick and tired of users trying to beat the system . Whats going on with the top two games also. I hope you have tools to check BOTs in the games too system feels rigged.
You should read the whole discussion.
I had assumed things were figured out after the last leaderboard ranking list debacle… boy howdy, I was WRONG!!! I think it may very well be a time to start my departure from anything TSB… This system is obviously rigged against the builder trying to build a professional career and studio against a cheating system as we have here. Every single time I give the slightest benefit of the doubt, I get bent over the coffee table and end up walking away with a sore rear end. It is not worth fighting the system… I won’t be gone overnight, which gives TSB to once again, try to win my love back, however, I ain’t being blindsided again. I will build in another platform while still supporting those of you that I have come to know and care for in the Common-Unity & SandFam! I will continue to offer logic help and guidance for those of you wanting such. At this time, I am not offering any more contests during this Builders Challenge as the system is majorly flawed.
Thanks for everyone who has enjoyed my games and has benefited from tutorials and guidance I may have provided. To TSB, good luck!
If you can’t beat em, join em.
I’m buying more lands and publishing.
I’m anticipating that week 5 and 6’s stats will be even more interesting.
Thanks for bringing the results faster @PeaJay also I empathize that it’s hard to be the messenger of the results.
The Builder Challenge is a moment that we anticipated a lot, but for many reasons, it has been bellow the expectactions.
Been thinking on the 100M SAND GMF announcement and how it’s so underwhelming with only 3M SAND distributed when BC2 ends.
100M SAND for 4 Years = 25M SAND/Year = 2,05M SAND/Month.
We’re in Month 8, so 16.6M SAND should have been distributed by now. If it was a linear unlock, we would have gotten only 18% of this year budget so far.
So my question is, is the 100M GMF fund will open the flood towards the end of the year and just reward massively? Don’t seem like it, so what’s the plan and road map for the 4 year 100M SAND GMF program? Is this funding Game Jams, vox Edit contests, is it funding the DAO or any other program?
All of this seems so much un-planed and it’s coming out unprofessionally executed, I’d rather have those 100M SAND in a road map that would lead to actual development where all Creators don’t need a Fund program to survive, but just a MVP that works for everyone.
More than a Builder Challenge, we (Creators) need:
- Strong Player Acquisition by TSB.
- Effective funneling system of Players into UGC.
- Better Creator Tools, such as: Leaderboards, Seasons, Airdrop/Claim system, Analytics, API’s, Social Engagement plugins (Discord and X/Twitter), Player Behaviour Data (heat map, spent time per location, time taken to complete each quest, etc).
- Improved servers for playability and enjoyability (if the game is laggy and rubberbanding, it will never be a fun game).
- Diverse Creator monetization strategies: embrace UGC tokens (instead of memecoins), allow Creators to create and manage their own marketplaces and whitelist accepted currencies (UGC tokens or other currencies), allow Players to spend tokens In-Game.
- Customized Matchmaking rules for players and creators (having custom filters for matchmaking priority, for example: based on region, on Avatar or Sandbox NFT).
- Enhanced Game Maker, it’s own existing features are still rather limited. Needs more freedom.
- Enable and allow custom PVP game settings (ability to create areas inside the experience that have PVP allowed).
There’s is no point of asking for feedback is TSB will just do whatever it pleases.
Not Decentralized, not Transparent, not Professional, not UGC. Just Sand thrown into our eyes and an handful of promises of tomorrow’s better future.
And please, don’t ask us to write a SIP as we’re not a TSB employees, we are already working on creating games and content, if you want, consider hiring members from the community, but don’t ask us to run the company. I’m a customer of a service you provide. Own up your actions, take responsibility. If it’s not working and wrong shots have been called, then act accordingly.
I’ve given plenty of feedback multiple times on how to improve the ecosystem and at this point, it’s beyond exhausting just to write this feedback over and over again. The problems we have right now, are just amplified problems that already existed 3 years ago.
Sad day for all Creators.
I believe they are taking into consideration that:
- Sand is at 30 cents today. Releasing that much sand into a depressed market will just push more players out since the value of it keeps getting pushed down.
- Considering it’s only S2 of BC and it’s obvious they are still trying out different models, best not to release all that money only to get squandered away
- It does seem like many of your requests require tremendous manpower and time to work on. Idk if you’ve noticed but most tech companies are downsizing, not vice versa.
It does feel like TSB staffs are stretched very thin. I might even go as far as saying that perhaps with Alpha S4 on the way, right after BC 2, it’s no wonder things are moving pretty slowly/inefficiently.
I guess we’ll just have to be patient.
So you’re meaning it was not well thought out plan and it’s a promise meant to be broken, because the token cannot sustain itself due to it’s un-effectiveness in it’s own market?
Funny, because on Token Unlocks, this isn’t a problem. You know how much was Unlocked on February 2024? 187M SAND tokens, almost the double of this 4 year program.
You know how much will be unlocked in 14 days? Another 181M SAND Tokens.
The sell pressure will be there, either you like it or not, and The Token unlocks this year alone are 368M SAND, that’s 3.7x more than what the 100M GMF will distribute over the span of 4 years. This is way more sell pressure that any of the UGC combined could ever make.
I’d be patient, if I knew the direction we’re headed at, but “If there is no direction, all winds are favorable”, and I don’t think anyone wants to have their life’s at drift.
It’s important to note that even with the unlocking pointed out by Pickaxe Master, SAND in February followed Bitcoin closely by increasing its value considerably.
It’s also important to point out that without knowing the data and numbers, we cannot properly analyze the selling pressure situation, and it seems to me that it is NOT within the scope of the Creator to deal with.
ABOUT GAME MAKER FUND
I am a creator who would like to see more solutions for creators to achieve financial self-sufficiency. However, since we don’t have these tools today, it seems necessary to continue the “GMF” models to foster the community.
If we take the latest publicly information I have, from december 2022, there is a budget for the former GMF of U$11.3 million, which at the time would be approximately 20M SAND (with SAND = $0.60).
AMA GMF december-2022
For those who are not familiar with the old GMF, it was introduced to the community in 2019 and was discontinued at the end of 2023.
In this sense, one of the focuses of the GMF was to be a solid foundation for its evolution, enabling the community to build many experiences with the aim of fostering not only the ecosystem over time but also testing the tool in development called TSB GAME MAKER and VoxEdit.
The GMF made it clear what they were looking for from the Creators.
"Take into consideration that we are looking for creators who:
- are able to create an original online game experience
- can attract players in a meaningful way
- show artistic imagination throughout their work
- can develop a long-term relationship with the players and the platform"
[The Sandbox introduces: the Game Maker Fund | by The Sandbox | The Sandbox | Medium]
With this, the GMF made important and significant investments in studios dedicated to implementing GM Logic and testing the GM to produce games. It also fostered the production of high-quality assets, providing content for Seasons, Events, and other TSB needs.
It was essential at the time and, in my view, a successful program in bringing developers and artists to learn the tools and engage the community. This is the case for me, as I started with GameJams and now work as a full-time GM logic developer for two and half years. Therefore, the GMF played this important role in creating a workforce for the ecosystem.
In the figure below, we can see that the portfolio was very diverse, always aiming for quality, both in terms of art design and the variety of game types.
AMA GMF december-2022
With this in mind, we know that the Builders Challenge was presented as replacement solution for the old GMF.
“The revamped GMF offers broader accessibility. Creators crafting high-quality Experiences and implementing effective marketing strategies will now have increased opportunities for recognition and reward.”[FAQ: GMF Builder's Challenge | En]
So, I come to introduce the former GMF to many who are not familiar with it, as it was a very important project for the community in the past. Perhaps many Creators, due to not knowing its history, perceive the Builders Challenge with a different intention than others.
PUBLISHER PROGRAM CALLED GMF
Context:
What I mean by the word “Publisher”:
“In the gaming industry, a Publisher is a company that finances, markets, and distributes video games. Publishers handle the business aspects of game development, such as funding developers and studios, managing production timelines, and launching games to the market. They often also assist in quality control, marketing, QA, standarts and localization to ensure the game reaches a wide audience, players and brands.”
Former GMF Characteristics:
“Take into consideration that we are looking for creators who:
-are able to create an original online game experience
-can attract players in a meaningful way
-show artistic imagination throughout their work
-can develop a long-term relationship with the players and the platform”
Intro:
Knowing that the former GMF’s primary role was to be a program where TSB acted as the Publisher for studios. In this sense, considering there are no adequate tools today for studios to be self-sufficient due all the issues in the ecossystem, the question is:
Question to @TSBCreators:
Why did TSB change its strategy from being a Publisher for studios? Was former GMF a successful program as a Publisher iniciative? If not, why? If yes, why wasn’t it restructured with the same Publishing GMF Ccharacteristics?
I’m not aware of Alpha Season 4 coming after BC2.
Wasn’t there an application opened for UGC Studios to participate?
This is a very important Event for the entire community. It’s noteworthy that The Sandbox Alpha Season 3 was a huge success and reached 17M visits.
[The Sandbox Alpha Season 3 reached 17M visits, a threefold increase over Season 2 | by The Sandbox | The Sandbox | Medium]