The Sandbox (company)
American video game developer
TSB Gaming (formerly known as Pixowl), doing business and commonly known as The Sandbox, is a metaverse platform developer. Founded in 2011, the company is now a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands. The company's chief product is The Sandbox, a 3D blockchain game platform released in 2021 as a sequel to the 2D world-building mobile game developed by the company in 2012.
The Sandbox is free-to-play, with in-game purchases available through an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency called SAND.
History
Early mobile games
The Sandbox was founded as Pixowl in May 2011 by game designer Adrien Duermaël and entrepreneurs Arthur Madrid and Sébastien Borget. The year before, with his wife Laurel Duermaël, a comic book illustrator, Duermaël had created Doodle Grub, a simple game that utilizes accelerometers in smartphones to allow the user to direct a snake-like character in the gameplay by tilting the phone. Pixowl was founded to develop new games and manage updates for Doodle Grub which had garnered more than 3 million users and 200,000 active daily players by August 2011.
In 2012, the company released The Sandbox, a world building mobile video game in which the user can create a "universe" that fits on a single screen using "elements" such as trees, fire, water and mud to achieve the increasingly complex objectives presented as levels in the gameplay. By August 2012, the company had a branch in Buenos Aires and was headquartered in San Francisco. Its products included iOS and Android games in 15 languages. The company also raised $1.2 million in seed funding on AngelList from investors 500 Startups, Kima Ventures, Ax Ventures' Pymar Fund, Martín Varsavsky, Fabrice Grinda and Joshua Chodniewicz.
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