The Value of User-Generated Content
How your game’s community can enrich the overall gaming experience.
The Sandbox Evolution, is the world’s most popular pixel art world creation game, with one million monthly players and over 40 million worlds created — that’s an average over 110,000 worlds created per day!
“The Sandbox may be one of the most popular mobile franchises you’ve never heard of,” says Arthur Madrid, CEO of San Francisco-based developer, Pixowl.
So why are this many players playing and creating? In the game, players use their divine powers to create amazing pixel worlds and entertaining games.
First and foremost, I should mention that the game is a mashup of pixel art, physics experiments, arcade game building, and the joy of sharing your creations with the world.
Players have the power to create static art-based scenes like a stunningly gorgeous pixel version of Toothless from How to Train your Dragon.
Players can also create other amazing things like landscapes with natural disasters, autonomous characters, and interactive elements such as water, metals, and electricity — or even full arcade game levels with controllable heroes and multiple game styles.
One key to the game’s success is its frequent updates with over 77 and counting to date since its launch in 2012.
“Our goal is to always have something new for our players,” says Madrid. “We keep adding new elements, game modes and new content from entertainment franchises like PAC-MAN, Ghostbusters and SHREK so there’s always something new to play with.”
There’s an anarchic, freewheeling nature to the game’s ethos, with players able to destroy their creations as well as share them with other players. There’s certainly no lack of things to try out.
Want to make a prehistoric world with real and mythical beasts? Go for it. Want to make music? Yep. There are more than 10 game modes based of genres like shooters, platformer or even physics-based puzzles.
One of its most emblematic game modes comes with the possibility to doodle around with electronics and with enough practice create some really interesting machines.
But the game even has more content that allows the player to create amazing stuff. One of The Sandbox Evolution’s most exciting updates allows players to even create their own elements and characters in the game.
Based on preexisting behaviors, the game allows creators to sort of “reskin” existing elements and give them fresh new looks. For example, they can now take the default avatar and make him look like a medieval hero, or a comic book superhero.
Whatever they choose to create, they can share with the world on the marketplace for other to enjoy!
In the game, there’s no wrong way to play — as long as you’re having fun you’re doing it right!
So, in order to sum up, player communities can be a great driving force to push games to new frontiers, but they need to have the tools and motivation to do so!
Different tools may come in the form of enemies, buildings or even behaviors, the key is that each new thing brings new possibilities to the table for creators to tinker with.
And the motivation comes naturally by 2 distinct factors. From the developers, when the community sees that the experience is in constant evolution with new updates and content. And on the other hand, from other players, who play and vote upon the content of the creators, making them feel that all of their effort was worth it.
