Singapore is among the countries with the most virtual landowners in The Sandbox’s metaverse, the Co-Founder of the prominent Web3 gaming firm said. And there are plans to expand the company’s reach to creators and brands in the Asia-Pacific region through the Republic.

Mr Sebastien Borget, who is also the Chief Operating Officer at Hong Kong-based The Sandbox, said Singapore has a sizeable community of users who understand the notion of virtual real estate.

In all, there are 23,000 to 25,000 unique landowners in the firm’s metaverse who bought more than 70 per cent of the 166,000 plots of virtual land.

Among them, there are 480 to 500 Singapore landowners on the platform who bought about 2.4 per cent of the total virtual land. This is relatively significant, given the size of Singapore’s population and the market.

This makes the nation an ideal place for the firm to develop its decentralised platform and launch activities, Mr Borget said. When asked, the company declined to share which countries have the most virtual landowners.

It costs 1,011 Sand tokens to buy one plot of land from a primary sale. The token was trading at around 42 US cents (57 Singapore cents) at the time of writing.

Founded in 2011, The Sandbox is a subsidiary of Asia’s largest blockchain investor Animoca Brands. Built on the blockchain, its metaverse or virtual world seeks to provide brands such as adidas and DBS Bank with virtual real estate so that they can build content such as digital shops for customers to explore.

Asia now generates about 40 per cent of the activity on the platform in terms of the number of creators, players, brands and landowners. Europe, the Middle East and Africa account for about 35 per cent of users, while North America and Latin America make up the rest.

The firm’s platform, which does not require virtual reality headsets and is accessible on Web browsers, has 4.6 million registered users so far, with over 400 brands.

Under the current model, a person can buy the platform’s virtual land and also use design tools to construct buildings. But users currently cannot deploy their designs on their own virtual land.

The firm is now preparing to lift this limitation by opening up its metaverse to any creator by the end of the third quarter of 2023.

This will allow more people to experience the virtual world, be engaged and also pave the way for creators to monetise their works, Mr Borget said. “You can now buy virtual land, but by the end of Q3, you can directly open your land to start attracting users or players (to build content) on top of it.”

To monetise their work, users can host companies or brands that want to roll out a short-term virtual campaign via the metaverse. They can also help firms build content in the metaverse since most of the companies do not have the capabilities to do so, said Mr George Wong, The Sandbox’s Head of Singapore.

The Sandbox, which has sold virtual land in three metaverse neighbourhoods, is expected to be more engaging for users as more gameplay elements like a multiplayer feature will be added by the end of 2023.

In September, the platform will add a Singapore neighbourhood, called Lion City, to its metaverse, said Mr Borget.

He added that a goal of the neighbourhoods is to show that the technology can create jobs and new skills.

Over the longer term, Mr Wong said his goal is to work with the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) to introduce the metaverse world to its students and teach them the skills they need to create content in the virtual world.

As a first step, ITE will set up a studio to build experiences in The Sandbox. This will give students an idea of the technical and working skill sets they need to build things in the metaverse.

“From there, after competencies are built, ITE can start to transfer these competencies to the students. Then the students have new skill sets. It could even be vocational,” Mr Wong said.

When told that the technology used in metaverses is not as user-friendly as one would expect, Mr Borget said that a mobile version of The Sandbox that users can enter with a click is expected to come in 2024.

He said that the biggest misconception about the metaverse is that it works only with a fixed platform.

“Metaverse is really not attached to a single platform. It can be on mobile, desktop, virtual reality and augmented reality consoles. The idea is that your digital identity and all your digital goods can move freely between any of those worlds, so you’re no longer locked in the platform as a user and you can really enjoy the freedom of moving, owning, transferring or selling them if you want,” said Mr Borget.

The developments come as investors’ appetite for the metaverse has started to cool as they flock to put their money in artificial intelligence.

Critics have pointed out that a key reason is the metaverse technology has not made meaningful progress and the adoption rate remains low.

Others have said that the concept of metaverses has proven to be time-consuming and expensive to bring to reality.

But Mr Wong said he thinks companies will eventually include the metaverse as part of their outreach strategy.

“Every new technology will go through a period of pushback because people don’t like change, don’t accept change or don’t want to change. We are obviously in that state right now.”

Source: The Straits Times ©️ SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.