I had to lock on to my other phone.
We're waiting for a couple of my people.
So I've got Tempest Studio, I've got Blockdog Studio, I've got Pexit Master, and I will invite
all of you guys to speak.
But unfortunately, the other space that we advertised, we definitely have more followers,
but my internet just been really, really bad.
So I had to change my phone.
I'll be sure to share this one out.
Okay, so we've got Otto Hats with us.
We've got Blockdog Studio.
I've invited all of you guys to become the co-host, just in case I dropped out.
So Alan, I've also invited you.
I'm going to have to post this link to our community because everyone is joining in, everyone
is asking us what has been going on.
Do we have everyone here?
I'm going to invite Beasting to represent Alta Studio.
And we've got Erica from META Futura.
Okay, I think we can get started as long as we are waiting for Beasting and META Futura
to pick up the invitation to speak.
I'm Rico from META Futura.
We have an Italian team, also partner of the sandbox.
We have some experiences also in the GameMaker found.
Excuse me, I have a bad connection now at the moment.
I give the words and I listen and after I repeat, I respond.
Excuse me for the English.
I'm just forwarding the link to our community because they are still asking me for the link.
But I'll just quickly introduce myself and obviously welcoming for all the guests that
were supposedly starting this space yesterday.
But unfortunately, I've been experiencing way too many internet issue.
I'm from Down Under, so from Australia.
We're probably well known for having really bad internet.
Tonight we've got a speaker coming from META Futura, we've got Block Doc Studio, we've
got Tempest Studio, we've got Alter Hats, and we've got Pixel Master.
We've got also Beasting that is representing Alter Studios.
So fantastic studio that we have on board today.
And today we wanted to focus on three key elements.
So number one is we wanted to sort of discuss what had happened during the season greeting,
which was just ended yesterday.
We wanted to sort of grab everyone's feedback, everyone's point of view, what had happened
in 2023 from the Sandbox, the whole overall experience with the Game Maker Fund and obviously
participating in a lot of the competition that Sandbox has been hosting for us.
And next is we wanted to look at 2024, what are the new things, the amazing things Sandbox
So for example, 0.9 Game Maker, they are announcing the Game Maker Fund, which is
I've been starting sometime in the next couple of hours.
They're also announcing a very good group planes, like a roadmap that is initiated for studio.
So my name is Wing, I'm from YarmLabs, I'm the founder of both project, which is YarmLabs
specifically focused on escape room gaming.
We've got the first escape room game launch on the Sandbox, which is the Wonder World.
So I'll allow my future guest speaker to jump in and just really introduce herself
introduce your projects and what exactly that you have been on.
How long have you been on with the Sandbox?
Does anyone want to take the microphone and explain who they are introducing your projects?
I can take it away and thank you for inviting me and us, the project.
So my name is Bruno, I come from the Pickaxe Master.
We've been part of the Sandbox ecosystem since 2021.
We are doing a mining game and very excited to hear everyone's opinions.
That's good topics to discuss about and hell yeah, let's do this.
So, hi, it's Moss, we're from OctaHeads Labs, I'm the founder of OctaHeads Labs and we've
been with Game Maker Studio, been working with them since 2021.
And we're actually been working on the game ever since.
So yeah, we just got released.
Last week, we were actually supposed to be part of the event in December.
But you know, everyone goes through some technical difficulties.
So I got pushed back to January.
But yeah, I'm so excited to talk with everyone today and see everybody experiences and see
what we can do better this year.
Yeah, we've also supposedly launched throughout the whole grading seasons, but we got pushed
back, but everything turned out fine for us.
What about Temple Studio and Alta Studio and Block.studio, do you want to introduce yourself?
Oh, I see Taiwan Creator Club also joining, so I'll get them to be the speaker as well.
Does anyone want to open mic?
So this is Cody Zine from Temple Studios.
We're a US based studio, but we have a great team that's international.
We've been building in Sandbox.
Going over three years now, we've got three or four Game Maker Fund projects, six published
experiences right now, and yeah, we do a lot of testing for the different Sandbox stuff
So we did some early point nine testing, we're doing some collection lab testing, and all
of that to help squash some bugs before it goes public.
Happy to be here, thanks for having us.
Awesome, so my name's Alan, and I'm the founder of Block.studio.
I jumped in onto the Sandbox during Alpha season one, so that was the end of 2021,
and that was when I was completely new to crypto, Sandbox was my gateway to the world
of crypto, and in early 2022, after doing a bit of game jams, we started the studio
and our longest project yet that we've recently launched is Atlantis, and I'm honored to be
in the same space as so many other studios, so I'm looking forward to learning more from
And what about Taiwan Creator Club?
Oh, wait, you haven't accepted my invitation to speak.
Can I jump in real quick?
Do you want to introduce yourself?
My name is Nani from Auto Studio.
We've been in the Sandbox for several years now.
I think it's up to three.
Time flies really quickly in the metaverse, I suppose.
Yeah, we've published two experiences so far.
One of them is the social help of ours, and we mainly do modular assets for the Sandbox.
You want to create modular building kits for new users and experience users as well to
quickly design their own maps.
So did you just say you've been with Sandbox for seven years?
I know, like a year or three.
Okay, I was going to say seven years.
No, I don't think they're alive yet at that time.
I'm still waiting for Taiwan Create A Club to accept my invitation to speak, but while
we're waiting for them, I'm going to definitely open up the first topic, which is the season's
Or perhaps we can talk about the whole 2023, the whole landscape.
What do you think of Sandbox was doing?
What was your experience with 0.9?
And of course, coming up to the end of the year and beginning of 2024, what is your forecast?
What is your expectation coming from a studio?
I am definitely not the best person to speak with.
Alan from BlockDoc Studio has been building our game.
So I'll probably get Alan to jump onto this one to wrap up the whole experience from
0.7 all the way, upgrading our game to 0.9.
So you want me to give a rundown of our experience from 0.7 to 0.9?
Yeah, I reckon that's probably going to be a good start and get other guests because
we sort of share the experience as well.
So it has been quite the journey.
I mean, a lot of you guys have been here for a while.
So you know what the old school versions of the Game Maker was like.
So while we were building Atlantis, we literally watched Sandbox Game Maker evolve
and just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
And if you look back to 0.7 versus 0.9, it's a completely different creature.
So I mean, starting at 0.7, we had a lot less features to work with.
So we had more limitations.
And then after each upgrade, of course, there's that hurdle.
I mean, some challenges is you have to readjust your logic to make sure that it's working again.
We started putting that in and then 0.9 came.
And it's been hard to catch up for sure.
But we're definitely excited to play around with the new features
and see what we could do to make our experiences even more awesome with it.
What about the whole 0.9?
Is there any sort of gateway that you see?
I wanted to get other speaker opinions.
For example, AutoHuts, you guys are saying that you were supposed to launch in January.
What is your experience like?
Oh, I can talk about this thing.
I think the upgrade, the news from the 0.7 from 0.9 are very super
because the creators can do a lot of more things good.
They have more tools for the creativity to build games and experiences.
Think now when one version comes after 0.9, what will it be?
And also, as we have an experience in the Gimmicker found
named the Legend of the Miners that was started from the 0.7
and with all the changes, it has an upgrade.
But every upgrade, we made a lot of changes inside about this.
I don't know if there are also other studios that do this.
What about the other studios?
Have you guys had any experience, like difficult journeys from 0.7 to 0.9?
Yeah, this is Cody, Temple Studios.
It's like everyone else has said, it's been a drastic improvement
as far as building in the sandbox, 0.8.
I think for me, the biggest things that brought was the visual changes.
We could do the lighting, we could do the visual effects.
And then the multiplayer mechanics, everything was ported to multiplayer.
So you could do so much more on multiplayer maps than you could before.
And then now that 0.9 is out, that's really the evolution of the logic in the sandbox.
Things that took you multiple assets linked together, sending messages before.
Now you can do simply with the rule logic system.
So it's definitely come a long way.
Even before 0.8, 0.9, they had presets and then they took them away to work on them.
So it's been nice to have those back a few versions ago.
But I think as far as evolving and editing the projects,
it's definitely keeps us on our toes.
Everything works and then a new feature comes out
and you have to double check everything to ensure it's there.
And I think that is the past year going such a drastic leap from 0.7 to 0.9.
That's definitely been a big topic and a big thing that we've been working on.
But I think even with some more of these most recent patches,
I think it's getting a lot better with the communication
and the list of what's been changed, with the change log and all that.
But yeah, I'm excited for this year.
And I don't know, potentially getting into 1.0.
But yeah, super exciting.
What about from AutoHuts and Pexax Master?
Do you guys have any experience from all the way from 0.7 to 0.9?
And where do you think we're going to be heading with the GameMaker?
And coming back to 0.9, it's been a huge improvement.
I think there's a couple of setbacks when you have very complex logics working,
is that whenever there's a new version, everything breaks
and you have to look at it, try to understand what's getting broken
and just trying to figure out what is new and how can you make it better.
So I remember when we started to do our mining game,
we had an RNG, which was pre-advanced by that time.
When we presented to the GameMaker Fund, even Sandbox said that,
okay, we don't understand how you make this game work, but it works.
And so it was a really good feedback that we were able to do things
that even the developers of the GameMaker did not know that it was possible.
And I think it kind of goes that way, is that they launched a new version
of the GameMaker, and then all the creators, all the studios,
start to work with it, and they realize they can do certain things.
They're just being creative about it.
Even the game devs of the GameMaker itself, they realize that,
oh, this is possible. This is cool.
And from there, they also start to iterate things that,
okay, if they're trying to do this and they take all of these steps
to do that one function, what if we just release something
that will allow them to do that much easier?
For example, I'm not sure at the time where presets were available,
then they were taken out, like Tempest.
When we started to do on 0.6, there were no presets available,
so everything had to be a single logic asset, the famous numpads.
So, map was filled with numpads, hundreds and hundreds of numpads,
and then presets came with 0.7.
It was such an improvement, and 0.8 came out with the visual improvements
with lighting and all that stuff.
And then with 0.9, when it came out with the game rules,
it was just like, we had a full room, just full of logic,
that we looked at it with what was possible now, and we just delete it.
That was like two years of work, of development, that we look at it,
and we're like, yep, this is no longer needed.
We just let's delete it, and let's redo it all over again.
The thing is that it was kind of of a sad moment,
looking at two years of development, just deleting it.
But the good thing is that we learned a lot
from being able to do the hard way, let's say.
So now that we have these tools, it's like, okay, we know what we want to do,
so let's use this upgraded version of it, and let's make it better.
So, although it's unfortunate that we have to rework our experiences over and over,
we bring the experience all along that we have learned during our journey.
So, whenever we get to look at these new features,
we come from a place like, okay, this is what we want to do.
We know where we had it at.
Now we've got new tools to work on.
So with that, we just delete everything and reiterate, again,
the same logic, but in an improved matter.
And I think that will continue to happen until we have this sort of version 1.0.
And I think that everything will become much more stable
in terms of migration from older versions.
And it will come to this point of, okay, this is it.
This is the ground basics. This is how everything will work.
And there will be some adjustments and improvements from that time.
But I guess that's being early on a project like the Sandbox,
which is currently under Alpha, so it's being under development.
It has its perks because you get to be there with the development.
You got access to give improvement tips or just suggestions.
For example, we provide a lot of suggestions to the Sandbox
on things that could be added on to the Game Maker.
But also, there's the downside of every time that something like that happens,
you have to redesign everything, or you have to, okay,
now we have to work this part of the logic again and again and again.
But it's all part of the process.
And I think it's, as a game dev, as a learning experience,
it's being a good one because when it actually gets mobile,
it gets closer towards this sort of grand final showdown,
open to the public in a much more grand way.
Let's say there's Sandbox has a lot of partners.
It has massive brands around it.
So I would imagine this collab or this campaign
that would happen with all of these brands,
like, hey, here's the Sandbox, and then it just becomes massive.
All of us have been here for quite some time
and developed during all of these years
and went through all the hassles of upgrading on Game Maker, et cetera.
We come out as much better game devs
and much more prepared to that grand launch.
So, yeah, that would be my take about it.
I reckon that was really for, like, really for all evaluations,
coming from the OG 0.6 all the way to 0.9.
It sounds like you guys have been for a lot,
the fact that you have to delete a lot of the assets
just to move things forward,
the things that you've been building for two years.
Really, I appreciate you coming on board with us.
I consider myself very early,
very late, come on, in terms of the Sandbox.
What about from Ultra Host?
Do you want to share your experience migrating your game,
perhaps from 0.6 or 0.7 all the way to 0.9?
I agree very much with the Pickaxe Master team.
Like, we had similar experiences
where we wanted to build an underwater kind of experience.
And in 0.6, 0.7, there was no swimming.
And I remember talking with the team on the Sandbox side,
trying to give us at least access to some of those gravity alterations.
And it was just impossible to get some of those done
without, like, taking such a long time.
So by the time we actually got the game to,
or at least, like, 80% of the logic built,
they introduced the swimming mechanics,
and it was kind of already too late to add that in,
because that means we have to delete everything and start over again.
So we decided to maybe we can just opt out of all of that
and just keep doing what we're doing
and create something that's fun and different.
But when it comes to updating from 0.7 to 8,
it was a huge improvement, obviously.
The lighting mechanics, the effects, everything,
it just looked so polished, and I was so excited to see them.
And I think for us, like, we were supposed to launch in February of 2023.
And because of all the delays with the Alpha, especially Alpha 4,
we had to kind of, I think we were wedged into 0.9.
I can't say it was a very positive experience,
because just like the pickaxe master,
we kind of had to redo pretty much all of the logics,
like, pretty much everywhere we had all of these calculators.
It was just so many things that had to rebuild,
and I think one of the biggest frustrations for us,
I don't know if it was a unique experience or not,
everything was running well in the game maker when you play it,
but once you post it onto the game client,
some of the logic would just break.
And that took us months, I would say close to like four months
to try and figure out from our side and from Sandbox theme side.
But I think overall that was a good experience,
because as much as we learned,
I think they learned a lot of stuff as well.
And moving forward with all of the new studios coming on board,
they will have better tools,
and I think it's just kind of like a rite of passage
where we're taking all of these stuff from the alpha
and trying to build it into the next phase,
which is going to be like crazy, especially when you get it on mobile.
I would say overall it was very positive,
and we're very excited to see what comes next,
especially for the next game jams and all of that,
and just seeing how the ecosystem is going to come out of it.
Amazing, thank you for sharing all of your experience.
I think really learning from all the gaming studios here,
we learned one thing, is building on Sandbox
is definitely take a lot of patience, a lot of time,
and a lot of testing with the alpha version of the game maker.
We definitely believe in Sandbox
that will produce a lot more thrilling,
a lot more creative, friendly toolkit for us as a builder
to be able to build our IP games.
So for myself, I'm not a builder.
I'm just going to tell everyone I'm not a builder, I'm not a studio.
So what we do is we bring the IP,
we bring a lot of physical entertainment specifically
in the escape room to build online.
So a lot of people were saying that,
hey, is that a mobile version of the Sandbox?
Is that like a VR version?
And I've been telling them, look, I've met Sebastian many, many times
over in Hong Kong, the nation, many different countries.
The whole Sandbox team has been telling us
mobile version is coming up soon.
Also, the VR option I reckon is definitely going to be in the pipeline.
But also has actually opened up really good question is the ecosystem.
So right now in this year, what I've learned, what I've got,
and been doing a bit of research is the game maker fun.
I believe all of us here are under game maker fun,
whether one or two games,
multiple games that you guys have been supported for the game maker fun.
What do you think of the 2024 changes?
So correct me if I'm wrong.
So the way that I see it is they encourage studios
to obviously do their own marketing,
get the player engagement and really boost up the ecosystem
and obviously the whole community within the studio.
Is that something that what the Sandbox is doing for 2024?
Of course, we're waiting for more confirmation
in our next couple of hours where they're hosting official AMA.
But I wanted to get your opinion as a studio.
What do you think of this new strategy?
What is Sandbox planning for 2024 for the game studios?
Does anyone want to comment on the mic?
I think it's a very good initiative that should have started earlier
So as any gaming platform, either it's UGC,
It relies on its community, on its players.
And for UGC, it relies on this very close relationship
of the creators and the players.
And we would see that on different type of platforms,
like for example Minecraft, for example Roblox,
where we have all of these different studios
or individual creators that would publish their experiences,
they would publish their adventures
and they would have then players to play on it.
So in terms for the Sandbox,
I think now putting that responsibility into the studios,
into the creators of actually being in the front line
of producing that content, of producing that engagement.
And so this is kind of opposed as to like for example
season gradings or alpha seasons,
where everything, all these content sort of comes from the Sandbox
and they manage the prize pools, they manage the rules,
So it really comes down to stepping back from that responsibility
of putting that content out there,
which of course it has to start somewhere.
And putting now the studios and the creators in the front line.
So it's kind of like, okay,
here's everyone that's building on the Sandbox
and now you guys are in the front line.
You guys do what you do, you publish your games,
you engage with your community.
And I think that's, one thing that's been a major,
I will not say issue but concern is the monetization about it.
So how does it get funded?
Well, there are not many monetization possibilities
around the Sandbox yet, because we lack a couple of small things
I would consider fundamental, for example, microtransactions
or a different way to use resources as an economy,
as an in-game economy that could lead into monetization.
These new engagement funds that it seems like you said,
we're going to have better details soon.
It's going to allow studios to have these sort of financial pillow
that will allow them to create for now, at least for the next four years,
because this is what it's been said,
there's this fund for the next four years.
At least there's a funding model that will allow some sort of play to earn
or at least give some financial to the studios to put out some prize pools.
And as we've known from at least the Sandbox,
which was a major catalyst of a big, big, big user acquisition,
is that it was a lot of people were drawn in because there were sand prizes
and people want to participate.
And it's kind of like that invitation for you to step in and taste the products.
In this case, taste what the Sandbox is like.
Now, when there's going to be all of these studios doing the same,
one, it's going to be a much more competitive.
So it's going to, just not about throwing an experience out there,
it will be really about throwing a very well thought experience,
economy, concept, engagement with the community.
It's going to kind of wrap it all up
and I think it will bring out the best out of the studios.
It will challenge them to make the best games, the most engaging games.
And I'm super excited what's coming this year.
I think you definitely have a very positive mindset,
but I wanted to hear from other speakers to talk about, you know,
the changes rule of game maker fun.
I just saw Tampa Studio was opening.
Mike, do you want to take on the next spot?
Yeah, I can address this one.
So I do think that we have to be careful.
I mean, in several hours, you know, we will know more information.
The Sandbox is doing the AMA about the new GMF, right?
Up until this point, we have a medium article, right?
So it's best not to speculate on things,
especially like, you know, in the Sandbox says something, you know,
we were like, oh, that's going to come out.
It's going to be cool because it's so early, right?
And things can shift and change.
So we've learned that it's best to not, you know,
be excited for it, but be ready to be flexible.
That's been the biggest thing for us as a business and building in this
space is that you have to be able to pivot.
If a new update comes out and it breaks, you know,
you have to be ready for it to break, even though it might not.
Right. You have to be ready for that.
So I'll try to answer my opinion on the game maker fun,
but try not to get into the weeds because we don't know exactly how it
And I do think that before, right,
as traditional, you know,
getting funding for doing anything,
you pitch your idea to whoever's giving the funding.
And then if, you know, they deem the idea valid,
in this case, a game and experience,
they'll provide funding so that you can go and build it. Right.
That makes sense because to build a game, it is time and energy.
And if you have a team, you know, you've got other,
other people you're that are dependent on you.
With this new model, it's, it's reverse, right?
You, you have to build first and then based on what you build,
you can be rewarded for that.
So that's something to keep in mind.
But the good part I feel about that is that it,
it lowers the barrier of entry for, for everyone, right?
You don't have to spend potentially a long amount of time
putting together a bad-ass pitch deck, right?
In hopes that it gets, you know,
positive reviews and seen by whoever's reviewing it,
you know, at the sandbox.
So, you know, if you are already building an experience,
if you've done game jam entries,
like every experience at that point is fair play as far as we know.
So I do think that's exciting for, for solo builders,
for, for anybody really building.
If you have an experience, you have potential to,
to yield from this new, in this new model.
So I think that's a step towards this new direction about,
you know, opening everything up,
you know, letting us mentor on assets and eventually avatars
So this is a way for, for the games to, you know,
monetize and survive and energize the space.
So that's, I think the biggest, the biggest difference.
So yeah, I'm, I'm really excited for later today to see exactly
how that will work and what we can kind of expect from that.
Yeah, I think definitely we shouldn't really be putting too much,
sort of like closing spot until we really hear from the official AMA
or official Twitch that they're going to go live.
And what about other speakers?
What about from Alta Horson, perhaps Metafutura and Alta Studio?
And Alan as well from Blockdog Studio.
Hello, I'm Errico from Metafutura, from Italy.
I can say that, like you said,
Cody from Tempest and Bruno also from Pique said,
we have to listen carefully what the AMA looking to say
to the community about this, all this news.
But I think the draft is that they want to make more,
they want to have more people inside in the metaverse
and in the experiences that people who have to play,
And yeah, with all the steps that we have done since today
from the 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9
and every time we have to change not all but a lot of things
inside of the experience, we need to have flexibility
because if you don't have the mind to open to the changes
and the things that come, it's difficult to run.
This is a way that we follow and we use the tool
And maybe for example, for me, the wonderful thing,
I'm a musician also, is I have the possibility to upload my music
by my own, no problem, and put it in the game.
But now it's not possible.
I don't say, oh, it's not possible.
I say, okay, when it comes, it comes the time.
And I think that now they want to make the metaverse
and also all the ecosystem more good,
excuse me for the English,
and they want to improve the production
and make it best in the way.
Also, if you compromise the way that the sandbox valorizes
every experience in the sandbox, you have a page,
you have a way also to monetize, to redirect the people
to show your experience, your spaces, your space
in a good position or other views of other competitors
where it can be the sand, the land,
or the infinity island, others that have the sandbox,
have a way to program the future, and I think it's the best way.
Very positive thinking as well.
What about from Beasting out of Studio and Blockdoc Studio,
and we've got also a host to hear about,
and then the next question I'll ask is the strategy part,
but I'll let the first speaker to take a spotlight.
I wanted to hear from you guys.
I got to that last question about the...
Yeah, so give me your thought about the new GameMaker phone
and what do you think as a studio can sort of like
fit yourself into this, you know, no more funding directly from the GMF,
but how exactly as a studio will be able to survive,
you know, giving the fact that you're going to be focusing
on the gameplay more, sort of like the play to earn,
engagement level, marketing and community, like what do you think of it?
Yeah, I think it can be a positive change.
All depends on the details, of course,
like the major issue which we are having as a studio with the sandbox
is the communication with the sandbox,
and that's partly because the sandbox is still like
dipping their toes in the water as well,
why they don't know exactly which direction they're going.
And the good thing about this is they're asking the community for feedback on it.
So I think we're all in it together, so to speak.
I think we're adding in the right direction with a lot of new features coming up,
this monetization option might be good as well,
like we'll have to see in the upcoming AMA like you already mentioned.
It is challenging, like as a studio to build in the sandbox sometimes,
because well, you're kind of in the blind somewhere,
sometimes you just don't know what you're building for,
like we create a lot of work once for stuff that's not working at the moment,
like we used to have the messages all clocked up into a single asset,
for example, and then point eight those donuts came out,
the logic donuts which are a major improvement.
Well, things like that are still some basic functionality missing sometimes,
like Bruno already mentioned from the sandbox, the microtransactions,
that would be a big one, video billboards, stuff like that
would be good for advertisement and stuff.
That is a lot of stuff that's coming and we don't know when it's coming,
but we're all excited to learn more about it for sure.
What about Alan from BlockDoc Studio?
A quick sense about how you think of this GMF?
So as Cody from Tempest mentioned, if we already have experiences made,
this is a big plus, because yeah, they're all fair game
and you've already got them made, including if you're like us,
you're participating in different game jams that Sandbox has hosted,
so you have a collection of experiences that are already done,
might need to be patched up a bit.
But on the other hand, if you're just starting out
and you haven't started creating that experience yet,
it's going to be a different story because now as studios,
we might not be able to depend on Sandbox to provide us with a seed investment.
So I believe a strategy that studios are going to be seen doing more of
is trying to secure funding from other sources.
So I think the system and the GameMaker Fund,
based on the little information I have,
because we've got to wait until their official talk,
but I think it's kind of similar to what Roblox has,
which is what they call engagement-based payouts.
So on Roblox, creators get paid based on factors like
how many hours premium Roblox players spend on their games.
So on Roblox, you have the subscription system,
and people who pay for that are premium,
and Roblox as a company will pay you
based on the number of hours that they're spending
on the amount of premium users who are on your game.
So yeah, it's definitely a big change.
Some other challenges, I would say, maybe not a challenge,
but more so a strategy, is we're going to see more people
trying to come up with ways to entice the player to play your game
and the nature of Play to Earn is usually a lot of players
will come on because they know that there's a reward
And then the other big factor is going to be on marketing.
I know that a lot of studios, a lot of game devs,
not really studios, but game devs,
we focus on building the games, game designers,
level designers, artists,
so marketing might be a little bit out of our element,
but marketing is what I believe is going to be driving traffic
to the experiences, and that's part of the KPIs
that is going to help us get paid
with the new game maker fund structure.
So yeah, I think there's both pros and cons,
and it's both benefits and disadvantages,
and we're just definitely going to need to think about
other strategies to see how we can strive with it.
Do you have any comment after all these feature speakers
giving us all sort of different perspective?
Actually, I kind of have, when it comes to everyone,
I've said I agree with everybody,
but I do feel that it's a little bit disadvantageous
If you're like a solo dev,
I think it makes sense with the direction.
Well, we're also going to see what they announced,
but from what we've been seeing from the past couple years
in Web 3, I stopped holding my breath.
I just wait until everything hits the fan,
and then we'll react to it.
But from now, I'm just looking at it,
and seeing the ways of monetization right now,
it just doesn't make sense for bigger studios
to come in and start to do a bigger project.
It's not meant for that yet, in my opinion,
because as they just put into perspective
everybody who's on the panel right now,
we've already worked on, experienced it for two to three years now,
and looking at how to monetize that
and just putting that that was like,
okay, I'm going to hope something will happen in the future
just doesn't make any business sense.
Obviously, it's an advantageous to be part of a new ecosystem
that also has its own thorns that come up in the end,
but when it comes to actual monetization
and having a future, making sure that this is sustainable,
like if I wanted to become one of the top studios in Sandbox,
if you ask me that question now,
I can't answer that question,
because when it comes to monetization,
we don't have any clear way to monetize all of that work.
And with everything keep changing every few months,
that also puts a lot of stress and strain.
So from my perspective, I'm waiting
and I'm just seeing how things progress
and seeing if anything makes sense for me and my studio.
But that's just where I'm standing right now.
Definitely there are difficulties for not only the big studio and the small studio.
I do see an audience actually raised their hand.
Rufu, I don't know if I pronounced your name right.
Do you want to open mic and ask our audience
in regards of Sandbox or Game Maker Fund?
Otherwise, jump on to the next question.
So for anyone who doesn't know me, I'm Rufu.
Essentially, I run my own little studio.
We're a small studio that specializes in a very niche area
that no one's really touched.
And with that, we've kind of gone.
We went for a Game Maker Fund application in the past
and got rejected after a bit of a drama.
I think going forward, they really need to work
on their communication with studios because frankly,
I'm not going to get into the sticks and bones
what happened with us, but we did everything right.
And then the message we got wasn't really acceptable
and the communication was patchy
and it was just like with all the effort and hoops we jumped through,
you know, it was kind of a bit like, okay, right.
That's how it's going to be, all right.
So it's kind of like disheartening
and I've heard other stories from other studios,
similar kind of sentiments of just doing all the right things,
doing the work, meeting the requirements,
but just getting kind of just picked out on a technicality.
And with these changes that are coming,
it feels like small studios are kind of going to be
Like I almost feel like the point of the game maker fund
has kind of shifted and it's going to be hard
for small studios like myself to survive
in a world where monetization is not ideal.
Like there's no robust system to monetize.
Yes, you can do it a few different ways.
It's not perfect and we're still in alpha.
So bear that in mind that, you know,
I am considering that the game is in alpha.
It's not, you know, and it's full life cycle yet,
but it just feels like they need to listen
especially some of the studios, you know,
that are not so big but have a good idea
and understanding of game maker fund
and just want to build something
and have a bit of support.
Like, you know, it's not as simple
as I build something, you give me money.
They want something in return,
but they just need to improve the way
they interact with studios
because it just feels sometimes
like they've got a very firm grip
and it strangles a few studios out
that could really do some really promising things.
I've seen some studios get strangled out
because they just got caught in bureaucracy
I'm not doing this again.
Like, you know, there's been a few horror stories out there.
that's what they really need to work on.
Yeah, definitely, you know,
it is going to be a tough time ahead,
especially given, you know,
sandbox official endorsement
And I guess coming from a project point of view,
they will have to incubate their own IP,
especially coming from a lot of different artists,
a lot of different pressure,
but to take on the voice of the smaller studios.
And I think that's exactly why I started this AMA,
is to really get all the studio,
whether you're big, you're small,
you're the OGs or you're the newcomer,
is really strategizing a new marketing strategy
that we can work around with,
not only for the Game Maker Fund,
but also to go-to-market.
So just for everyone that don't really know
the abbreviation of GTM is the go-to-market strategy.
So a very quick introduction of myself.
I have a marketing background.
I've run my marketing agency for Web2 Marketing Agency.
I'm not going to bring that into here,
but what I wanted to sort of get everyone's idea
is how exactly that we can help each other,
to come onboard and really increase that traffic,
really increase that customer engagement.
And obviously, getting that beta tested
or whether getting the user testing,
the user journey, I think that's very important
because we focus a lot, like Ellen from Block.studio
has been working with me for over one year
But throughout that journey,
we've experienced a lot of different things,
not only from the Game Maker,
from a development point of view,
but also from the market sentiment.
So we're moving from bare market to bull market right now.
I reckon it's going to be,
we're at the very beginning of the bull market
and that's exactly why I wanted to get everyone on board.
Talking studio to studio,
how do we collaborate to be able to win,
sort of create this win-win situation?
For example, what Rufu was talking about is,
I will assume that you're also from Australia,
really getting hands-in-hands,
helping studio to studio,
really boosting up that customer.
For example, what Ellen was talking about,
how exactly we boost up that customer's staying,
how long that you can stay in-game.
How do you boost up that social quest
that not only relying on Sandbox traffic,
obviously Sandbox has a really fantastic coverage.
They have one million followers,
and Sebastian got a lot of followers as well.
But we can't really rely on their support.
We actually need to build our own community
and really focus on our project marketing.
So I wanted to hear from all the guest speakers.
Have you guys talked to your team
or have you guys strategized for 2024?
How exactly are you going to attract the non-Sandbox user?
How exactly are we able to do that?
The second question I wanted to bring to all the guest speakers here
is how exactly that we can work to create a win-win situation.
I've got a couple of strategies I'm willing to share,
but I wanted to hear from all of you guys first.
Does anyone want to take a spotlight to speak next?
Yeah, I know I just spoke,
but I'll just put it quickly if you're happy for me to say something.
Yeah, I think going forward,
if we are all to survive,
well, that sounds a bit dramatic,
but for the studios out there that are not so well off like myself
I think we just need to band together
and help each other out with sharing our content
across social media, Discord,
and cross-promoting each other's games
because it's mutually beneficial,
because we can't do it alone.
No studio here could probably go out on their own
so my strategy is to leverage the relationship
I've made with other studios
and help them by putting their games,
their cross-promotions in my game to help them out,
and hopefully they do the same backwards
and intermix our communities
instead of separating our communities into different bubbles,
That was also the strategy that I have in place,
and I think I wanted to hear from other guest speakers.
What do you think of sharing?
Because, honestly, from a very Web2 point of view,
I've only really got into Web3 less than two years ago,
so I probably do not have any say
compared to any OG speakers here,
but coming from a very strong Web2 background,
I think that's where the demographics are.
We can't just strictly focus on Web3 game for people,
players, but we need to bring on board a lot of new blood.
So Matta, Theodore, do you want to take on the next question
since you already have the mic open?
Yeah, I can respond to the strategies that we want to use,
and I think that collaboration
and knowing each other is a wonderful thing.
I think also all the people that are in the Game Maker found
also have the communication on Slack with the studios,
This is what the Sandbox also wants to do.
What, personally, we do for the Sandbox
and then to have the community
and to have a good relationship with the community
is we do every Wednesday live on Twitch.
In fact, today, in 30 minutes,
we do a live with Atlantis,
where we play the game and we host on Twitch.
We want to do this with giving the time to present the game.
Also, I play the game live with the creator,
who also behead me, and we can talk about the game.
We want to do this every Wednesday with all the studios.
In fact, I want to invite pancakes, tempest,
roof, octopus, batman, everyone out that now exists.
Otherwise, at the same time, we just do work on a universe
that is our main project, that is a multiplayer game.
Inside, we have a lot of partnerships with a lot of students.
It's a multiplayer game where, at the moment,
for six months, we will open for the partners that come with us.
In fact, I also invite all the studios that are here.
Some of them are also just inside of this project.
It gives you a part to customize in your way
to promote your creations and games.
Also, you can give us something to give away
to promote your game and your experience.
In the same time, we will use this multiplayer game
for the start of every live on Twitch,
in the way to involve all of the community.
We are Italian, we have a little community,
but I also check the players of the sandbox.
Sometimes, not sometimes, but they are always the same
that jump in all the games.
Making a team about these things, I think,
is the best way to have a win-win thing.
Giving our hands and making a cycle is a big thing
for the community, I think, for the project that we want to have.
Yeah, I think everyone is definitely on the same page.
I do see Beasting from Outer Studio is opening.
Mike, do you want to talk about what sort of strategy that you have?
Yeah, just to elaborate a little bit more on it.
Yeah, Rofu was mentioning the cross-weather promotion
for different studios, which we're all abroad on.
We've also had a collaboration hub inside of our social hub,
actually, since the beginning, where we're featuring other creators as well.
I invite everybody to reach out to us and talk to each other, I suppose.
Like we did, we've got a collaboration hub where we're featuring,
for example, Jari, who is listening in at the moment as well,
A lot of creators, we've got some NFTs displayed,
and then a little text, we put out QR codes for everybody
just to even end-game to do some cross-care communication as well.
I actually wanted to get Alan to talk about how we design the next game.
Just for anyone that really don't know, we're building a Skateroom game.
It's really perfectly to fit this narrative of getting everyone to solve puzzle,
and every room is going to be designed for each studio.
What that means, I was doing a bit of brainstorming.
I was telling Alan from Block Doc Studio that we will have about 40 to 50 rooms,
and each room, it will be a time travel machine.
It looks sort of like a teleport machine
that you can teleport to other studio's gameplay.
I'm not too sure if this is possible to have too many time travel,
maybe too many teleports, but the idea is we want people to solve puzzle through social media.
The way that I strategize it is not only just sharing the player database.
Essentially, people that played around the gaming studio is all from sandbox anyways.
We want to bring a lot more web2 people coming on board,
web2 and non-sandbox web3 people players coming on board.
For example, they solve a social puzzle, like a social media.
For example, we'll put in a puzzle gameplay that have 500 center again.
Whoever gets the correct answer will actually be obtaining the key to this room,
and that room will open up to, for example, a template studio gameplay.
That's a soon-to-be launch gameplay.
Alan, do you want to talk about how we perhaps can sort of strategize in terms of the game development?
Not exactly, not really just on the marketing side.
You've covered a lot of the concepts already, so which part exactly would you want me to go over?
Maybe I'll perhaps talk about the game development and how we can.
The next game that we're building is the Pyramid of Ginsar.
Do you want to talk about that?
I honestly don't know. I think you did cover everything.
Unless you want me to talk about something specific.
I think mainly it's to talk about the possibility.
Is it possible to have a teleport where in each room,
every player solved the puzzle or obtained the puzzle, obtained the answers from social media,
coming on board to enjoy other studio's gameplay?
That way, the way that we're attracting users can also be leveraging to other studio as well.
I think on a social media campaign, on that front, that should be possible.
But the technicalities of bringing a user from an experience to another that isn't a neighboring land,
I'm not sure if that's possible yet on a technical level in the game maker.
What about other studio? Is that something that you have sort of having planned?
I wanted to hear from perhaps Tempest Studio or Pekka's master.
Do you guys have a strategy on not only relying on the game maker fund,
but what are your go-to market strategy for this year?
I think that this is an important question,
and it kind of ties everything we've been talking about together today.
But you have to look at it from the sandbox's perspective sometimes.
The previous game maker fund method, we put together pitch decks,
like, hey, we have a great idea for a game,
we're building a game for a client, here's what we want to do.
The sandbox is funding all of these games,
and if any of you, most of you have probably seen what that pitch deck involved,
they gave you a template, you had to fill it out.
Yeah, you had to talk about the game, the game loop, show the visuals,
but at least 50% of those slides were, how are you going to market it?
What are you going to do to keep going?
When you build a game, it's like you're getting married, right?
It's not a, oh, I'm going to build it and then go away, right?
It's a long-term investment, not just to build it and maintain it,
but you've got to get people to play it,
you've got to get people to come back,
and you have to figure out some way to monetize it, right?
So, that's something important to remember.
So, I have a feeling that there were many, many submissions for game maker
fund that were approved by the sandbox, and they got the divorce, right?
They made the game, and they didn't do anything to bring players to the game.
And you have to remember, like, we want to build in the sandbox,
but the sandbox is not Roblox right now, right?
We want to build a game and expect people to come,
millions of people to come play the game,
because that's just not the reality of the situation right now, right?
We know if we're building here, we're going to have some bumps and challenges,
but we have to do the work to bring players there.
The sandbox, I mean, you guys see everywhere Seb's going,
you see the stuff the sandbox is doing, they're doing their side,
but now it's the studio's turn.
We have to get players in, whether they're already in the sandbox,
they're in web3 or they're not into web3 yet.
So, all of that said, I agree with everything everyone has said.
We do have to work together.
I feel like there is a core, core group of sandbox users
that know everyone here, and they visit all the streams that people do, right?
But there's a lot that aren't, so we have to be able to appeal to all of them,
but the most important thing is how to make your games appealing,
how to get people coming back.
So, some of our ideas, like we stream three times a week,
we've streamed at least two times a week since like 2020.
Obviously, we miss some every now and then, depending on the week,
but engaging with the users, with the players,
and just making stuff that works, that people want to play,
listening to feedback, pivoting to the updates of the sandbox and that sort of thing.
But yeah, I think supporting each other, rating each other's streams,
even just retweeting, posting, others' experiences,
But it does come down to us marketing our projects together
and getting this user database to grow even more.
So, it's also about dollar sharing as well.
So, the way that I see coming from three different speakers
is we should run more social campaigns together
to also let each one of our studios,
I'm talking about the demographic from your community,
to also know about the partner studio.
What about from Petcast Master?
Do you have a sort of go-to market strategy,
other than obviously collaboration, collaborating with other studios?
So, I have a bit different vision of what everyone talked about.
I agree with what everyone talked about, collaborating on this space.
I think it's needed, it is mandatory to at least this stage.
So, what I feel like is that right now,
we're trying to take one step further than our legs.
So, what do I mean with this?
I think the sandbox is very good at user acquisition,
and I've said this multiple times.
You would look at the sandbox server,
and they've got about 280,000 people on it.
Whenever you have an alpha season, season greetings,
whenever they launch a new event,
there's a lot of new people that come in.
But in terms of their user retention strategy,
I would have to say it could be better.
So, there's a lot of people that go in,
they try out one game or another that they present,
So, what I mean with this, there's a huge potential
that that's not being taken advantage here.
And I would say that, for example,
all of these studios that are present in this panel,
they're very good at user retention.
It means that you got, like for example,
most of everyone that's here,
they would go to the same streams,
they would play the same games,
they would go from stream to stream,
to creator to creator, studio to studio,
and watch what everyone is doing.
They're this core group of the sandbox,
and that's what I would say in terms of user retention,
which kind of goes tied up into culture.
So, these members are the culture of the sandbox.
They know what the sandbox represents,
what the studios are trying to build,
what they're trying to do for the future.
So, right now, for example,
I would say all our Discord servers,
they're not bigger than 1,000 members,
which means that in terms of if we call these studios
that are trying to bring their own IPs,
their own ideas, their own games,
we're not able to retain the users
that the sandbox is able to acquire.
So, there's a big gap between these two steps.
What I want to say with this is that
there should be a better funneling
or a curation of these new players
that the sandbox invites in
and spends these marketing to bring all of these players
then to effectively get them to find a place to call home.
So, there's going to be players that they like RPG
or they like resource type of games
There's different many genres of games
that players are more found off.
And this curation is not working effectively.
So, one thing that should happen right off the bat
as someone registers on the sandbox website is ask,
hey, what type of genre are you into?
And then present some of these,
like you'd have trusted partners,
you have these studios that sort of
prove themselves to be serious,
like Tempest and Cody was saying,
there's been a lot of divorces.
We've seen a lot of games that have been accepted
on the Gameicr fund that have built the games,
but they did not continue
in terms of actually trying to build a community,
trying to build something out of that experience they made.
So, I think studios that have been here for a long time
and they're trying to actually build something
more than just the game itself
and trying to provide a long-term commitment,
they're lacking the tools to have this curation
of having all of these players,
there's in Discord 280,000 players
that's, I would say, only 1%, no Tempest,
no Meta Futura, no Pickaxe Monster,
no Rufu, no Outer Studios, OctoHeads, so on.
So, before we, in my opinion, of course,
this is all personal opinions,
before we want to take a look into what's happening
in other Web 3 or even Web 2
to acquire new users for the Sandbox,
first, we need to make sure that the user acquisition
that the Sandbox does in such a good way
is effectively funneling down those players
into the ecosystems that it's to their preferred game style
or their preferred genres.
If that happens effectively,
which, for me, it's the number one thing
that should be addressed or taken care of,
now, all of these users, and we talk about metrics
like how much cost to acquire one user
and all of that stuff, so it would bring down
those margins for the Sandbox themselves
because the studios would be able to work on that
on behalf of the Sandbox, so they only have to worry
because they know that all the existing games
and studios and projects out there,
they will take care of their users.
They will make sure that these players
will have a place to call home,
and I think that's the most important. Why?
Because that goes tied into culture,
so one of the things that was mostly discussed here
is about the collaboration between the projects
and having my experience, I featured these assets
or these elements from other games,
but most importantly, for me,
I think the best thing we can all do
as creators in this ecosystem
is first, especially being in Web3,
and I think that this is very, very important.
How many times we followed projects
that just crumbled over and disappeared
and all the players and versus,
all those just got left out with nothing,
so I think the first step
is bring security to the ecosystem
that players, when they join in,
they feel that I feel secured,
I feel that this place I can call home,
I feel that there is stuff is happening here,
and if every one of these studios that are here
and others that are not present,
there's a lot of studios around the sandbox,
of giving those players the security of,
okay, I can find this place to call home,
I like it, so it becomes,
first you try the water, you like it,
then it becomes like this sort of thing,
you go and play, and then you try the other game,
and then it becomes a hobby,
so when it becomes a hobby,
that it becomes the culture of those players,
all of those 280,000 players
that are on the Discord server
the way that I see it is obtained
by giving real value to the players,
and what do I mean with real value?
It means actually putting an experience that is fun,
it's engaging for the player,
he wants to come back, not only solely
because of potentially sand prizes
or NFT prizes, because they like to play that game
and also because of the community they're in.
I've played games way over a long time
that I was tired of the game,
but because I love the community
and everyone was on it, I kept playing.
So, for me, it kind of goes down
into before looking everywhere elsewhere.
First, we have to funnel down
the user retention of the user acquisition
and all of these thousands of players
find their specific niches,
because I like to play one game,
I bet everyone likes to play different games,
and they have to find their places to call home,
these projects have to be serious
to bring security to those players,
I really like this place,
then they will start to look everywhere else
like, oh, this project, that project,
and if you see that's already happening right now
with the core group that we can call it
that's go to every stream
that would play all the games with us,
they are part of the culture,
they are part of this core group of the sandbox,
and it's a fine example on
how they probably find these one project
and then since they felt security
of that project, they started to look for other projects,
and it just become part of these big sandbox community.
So, before looking outside,
I would start looking inside,
and I feel like I've extended my time here,
I reckon it's a really amazing feedback
coming from not only, you know,
obviously just the collaboration itself,
but really looking for the long-term
in the sandbox point of view is
not only creating a quality gameplay,
for activating the sandbox community,
also bringing back, you know,
bringing back to the sandbox community
by the stuff that we have built.
I do see Otto has put their hands up.
Do you want to open mic and comment on
what are the go-to-market strategies
that perhaps your teams have brainstormed?
Well, didn't want to really talk about market strategy
because right now we're looking at different ways
to monetize and also build a brand elsewhere,
but I wanted to discuss something about
what Pickaxe Master talked about,
and I think it was very, very crucial.
And it comes to player retention.
It kind of brings me back.
I don't know if we're all here gamers,
but we probably played Blizzard,
you know, games from Blizzard games,
and seeing how Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 came out
and how the player retention from both games,
I'm pretty sure we can all agree
that Diablo 2 was a superior game,
even when it comes to Diablo 4.
And the reason for it was just the game loop mechanic was fun,
and also it built something
that was a little bit different
when it comes to creating communities.
Even though when you go into, let's say, a game room,
similar to what we have in sandbox,
when you go into a game room,
it has a specific chat for that room.
But when you get out of the game room,
you get put into a chat room
with a bunch of different players
where you can communicate spam
and do memes and stuff like that.
But currently, when it comes to the games on the sandbox,
it takes you back to your screen.
There is no way to communicate back to,
or kind of forces the player to go back to a room
where you can talk with other players
that went into that experience.
So for me, it feels like, yeah,
we have a lot of different studios coming in
and creating amazing experiences on the sandbox,
but we're kind of still in our own bubbles
where I would say my community comes in and plays,
they come into my Discord
and talk about all their findings.
They don't go on other people's Discord
because it's kind of like a stigma, right?
I don't go to pickaxe maps
and talk about my experience.
It just doesn't seem right.
So right now, there is no common ground
and talk about different experiences
other than the sandbox Discord.
But that's also not a good way
because it's still part of,
you know, it's not part of the actual UI.
So the next steps for user acquisition
and user retention is to have a UX UI
that allows a player to have a feedback loop.
But when you finish an experience,
it gives you a chance to try something else
or go into another game room
and keep on that loop of,
okay, I need to come back for more,
When you finish a YouTube,
and start your browser all over again.
It puts other videos on the side
and at the end of the video.
And if you press the whole button,
it refreshes and gives you
a lot of different videos to watch.
And that's where we're actually missing right now
because they're all hidden on the map.
And God forbid, like I tried this morning,
tried to find one of my other studio's maps
and it was atrocious for me to try and find it.
It took me 15 minutes to try
and navigate through that monstrosity.
So there is some work to do
But I think when it comes to that,
just the UI and getting the player away
or maybe just a recommendation.
Hey, you like this experience?
That would just create a chain reaction.
And I think that's what we're waiting for.
I think I've never really thought about it,
but that's a really good point is the algorithm
that when you finish an experience
at a very specific genre,
what I've been hearing from other studios
that I was having a really casual conversation is
according to 0.9 GameMaker,
it's going to be fantastic for a thrilling genre.
So imagine throwing genre,
you'll be able to get filtered up,
you'll get algorithm that's feeding you up.
You gave a five out of five rating.
How about try the next game?
I think that's what we can look forward to,
what the sandbox can provide.
that's what you were saying that, you know,
a lot of games should really be, like,
to be able to relate to other games,
not only by ourselves, as in studio to studio,
just, you know, relying on sort of like the outsider
collaboration, whether it's a co-marketing,
but really coming from the sandbox internally.
I definitely both agree with Auto Health
and the pickaxe master is, you know,
pickaxe master focus on what perspective
how we can really strengthen our community,
really build our own community,
engage in gameplay and activating the sandbox community.
But I reckon that was a really fresh perspective.
And I do see Rufo to put their hands up.
We should be wrapping up the conversation very soon.
but definitely, do you want to cover and speak about
just, you know, just to sort of give your feedback?
Yeah, I just wanted to add on very quickly that
I feel like if the sandbox,
let's say when 1.0 comes out, all the options are out,
If the sandbox goes at the beginning,
here's 50 tokens to go play people's games.
The tokens are worth $1 or whatever they are,
whatever the conversion is, it doesn't matter.
And there's that AI integration like you were talking about.
I think it'll drive a lot of players to different games
and to explore because at the moment,
as it was mentioned by someone else here,
one of the other speakers,
there's no real, like, direction.
It's kind of just all over the place.
But if there's that direction with a little bit of incentive,
players will explore and reach out and find new experiences
that might not be as known as, you know, the Pickack Masters.
It could be a solo studio or it could be just an unknown brand
that's got this really good idea and a really good game,
but no one's ever heard of it.
So, like, I feel like it's like giving the cheese a little bit of,
giving the rat a little bit of cheese.
If you give it a little bit of cheese,
it chews on it, likes it,
and then continues to go seek out cheese over, you know, rubbish.
If that analogy makes sense.
You've got to incentivize the player,
order them in the market, and then keep them on the Copian
That's what we should, the Sandbox and Studio,
should be focusing on, getting that player in that mindset,
locking them in, and get them keep coming back.
And I think quality, incentives, and maybe a bit of AI
are the best way to do that.
Yeah, I think in terms of customer acquisition,
that's what you were saying is, you know,
is it coming from Sandbox, coming from GameMaker Fund?
We should have a very, very small,
even if it's just 10 cent token,
to be able to play the next game.
But that's still a very sort of incentive-driven.
What I do believe is, you know, in couple of things,
just to wrap up this meeting, wrap up this AMA,
is we should be continuing building quality gameplay,
not only just relying on the GameMaker Fund,
but we need to make sure our community is strong enough,
to be able to play the game, and the fact that we have just launched
our Atlantis gameplay about, I would probably say eight, nine days ago,
we've actually built up a very small community of 3,500 people in Discord.
We have about, you know, less than 5,000 on Twitter space,
and it's a testing ground for us.
And we realise people actually genuinely love escape room and puzzle games,
so we're going to continue that pathway, delivering that gameplay,
with the mindset of, you know, how do we play to earn?
That's what Pick S Master was saying, that how, where is the element?
Where is the play to earn element?
And where is the engagement level that the community can really stay on?
And for a smaller studio perspective is, you know,
we need a very, like a kick-start funding.
I wouldn't say a big amount,
but obviously we need to focus on collaborating with studio
outside of the sandbox to be able to drive the traffic together.
So what I have initiated with my team,
obviously it's not a set in stone type of thing,
but we were actually thinking of bringing 50% of the game maker fund
that we have earned from, I wouldn't say earned,
but we have received from the sandbox actually distributing back
to all our partner studio.
So for example, if all of you guys are partner studio,
we're actually wanting to give that money away for the player
to play our partner's gameplay.
For example, they can play meta filter,
or they can play, you know, a temporal scan page.
Just go play other people's gameplay
and test out their game and see how you go with it,
because we don't mind sharing.
Well, at least in my own opinion, we don't mind sharing.
At the end of the day, it's building,
it's helping studio to build that community,
also helping to build our IP, our own community.
So does anyone want to sort of like put their last feedback
in terms of we're really looking forward to the game maker fund,
but in terms of really wrapping up the collaboration
with all of the studio and all of the creators?
I do see a lot of creators here,
so it's fantastic that we have quite a lot of folks added creator.
I had a check off all the sort of profile.
It's really good that everyone is tuning in,
sort of listening from the top game studio.
Does anyone want to give a one-liner, sort of like a summary in today's AMA?
I'd like to add up something, which is,
so the pickaxe master, when we started,
I started to post ads on Discord server,
which I think it's a very good place to start.
So the pickaxe master did not grow into a big studio.
It started like very, very, very small,
and actually there were no funds.
We were building almost for seven months
It was just a couple of individuals that had this passion to build games,
and we just kind of get together, we started to build,
then we have the first showcase of the game,
then actually when the game was pretty much well developed
is when we actually showed to the GMF.
So for everyone that's listening here and towards the GMF funding,
I would say that find yourself, other passionate people,
like yourself that want just to build games,
start to do it on your own,
and then eventually things will start to fall into place.
So that would be my advice,
and thank you for inviting for this conversation.
Amazing. And what about Temporus?
Do you have a summary, sort of like a one-liner to sum up today's AMA?
So I think just to summarize,
we all have to stay flexible, right?
We have to be able to pivot based on what's coming,
but ultimately I think it's easy to assume
that there will be competition,
a rivalry between creators or studios or anything
because of this new GameMaker fund model, right?
But the important thing to remember is that if just one of us succeed,
if the sandbox succeeds, everyone succeeds.
It's in everyone's best interest if we all work together
to support each other, to share what everyone's doing
because that's what everybody ultimately wants is success
and for the sandbox to do well.
What about the other guest speaker?
Just one-liner summarizing,
or maybe your final thought for this AMA?
Oh, I can thank you and everyone who joined this space
and we like collaboration
Now, after maybe I can send some messages
to invite you to talk about your project
on our Wednesday Live on Twitch
and also see in the future a lot of news.
I think when we focus about the users,
I think it can come with the mobile version about this.
What about the other speakers?
So from Otto Hurst Blofdorf studio,
perhaps from Rofi and Otto's studio.
Do you guys have any final...
It sounds really weird when I say final word,
but do you guys have a summary to wrap up today's AMA?
Yeah, just with anything related to building a studio
and building a brand, you're always going to fail.
You're going to hit roadblocks.
You're going to get screwed over.
Someone's going to do something that you don't like
or a decision is going to go against you.
Just keep pushing and building your brand
because there's studios out there like mine
who will always support you and don't let it discourage you
because it can be really disheartening
when you get your heart broken or something goes against you
or it just is not working.
Just keep trying, never stop
and just always reach out for help from other studios
if you need help with marketing or help with
just getting your brand out there.
I have one last thing to say.
With everything, I'm so excited
and I'm very happy to be talking with everyone on the panel.
But my last thing I would say is like
just remember to have fun as much as you can
because you cannot compete with someone who's having fun, bottom line.
You know, money in, money out,
but if you're having fun, you'll find a way.
If you're having fun, it doesn't matter.
It's about the experience.
What about from Alan from Blocked Off studio
Last year's studio to give final thoughts.
So I really enjoyed listening to all your insights.
You know, it's really nice here.
And well, it kind of feels good knowing that, you know,
we share the same struggles and all that.
So I just wanted to say, you know,
we've powered through this bear and it's been brutal.
So I think just moving forward,
I think we need to just be agile, ready to adapt.
And those of you who are around early on in early 2022,
you know, I remembered when there was more demand
for land development than there were with creators available.
So, you know, I think times will definitely be different up ahead.
You know, when the bull comes back swinging because right now,
you know, we're on a web three platform, the market's slow.
And that means the consumers are, you know,
not here and the demand's also not there,
but I am hopeful and optimistic about the future.
So yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what you all create
and definitely totally down to, you know,
support one another in the ecosystem.
What about from Alta studio?
Yeah, thanks for having me first and foremost.
It's been really interesting listening to all of you fellow creators.
I think what you mentioned earlier about like a cross-experience
scavenger hunt kind of thing.
I think it's really doable as well.
If you want to link it to an experience page,
then you don't need a portal per se.
So that's definitely an interesting part of your on your end.
And maybe it's worthwhile to set up a group chat
with fellow creators to keep in touch.
100%. I've already got the group chat open.
So most of the, I would say up to 50% of the game maker fund
that we receive, we just distribute it to all the studio.
You know, we do a lot of co-marketing and I reckon
that's going to drive more traffic than just really
receiving that grant, really receiving that fund.
Okay, so I'm going to finish up this AMA, really amazing.
And I know that I've been having way too many difficulties
and supposedly we've got two to three hundred people
actually sign up to this space.
I had to use my other very old phone
just to lock onto this space, but really fantastic.
I'm going to share this recording to all the communities
and hopefully you guys will do the same.
We'll keep in touch in the group chat,
in the Twitter group chat and I'm going to share you guys
every thought that we have,
especially when we're building the next game.
We'll keep in touch and nice meeting to a new friend, Rufu.
We'll definitely support you as a smaller studio.
Ask us anything if you need technical support
or perhaps if you need marketing support,
just shout out and we'll definitely be there for you guys.
Thank you for joining us, this AMA.
I'm going to pretty much closing this off.
Good night or good morning to you guys.