The Council QA
We play games wrong so they work right.
2025
Services
Menu
Consulting Partners with
2
CORE QA LOOP
The Council is a studio in The Sandbox ecosystem that specializes in Quality Assurance consulting for official Sandbox content, their partners, and metaverse architects like you.
We are Sandbox staff, community leaders, and industry experts. We’ve spent TENS OF THOUSANDS of hours playing, creating, and testing in The Sandbox ecosystem alone. You WANT us supporting your team.
WE PLAY GAMES WITH THE INTENTION OF BREAKING THEM
WE IDENTIFY THE SOURCES OF SHORT AND INFREQUENT PLAY TIMES
MONETIZE KNOWING YOUR GAME IS WORKING AND POLISHED
LAND OWNERS CAN LAUNCH WITH CONFIDENCE
3
2025 QA SERVICES MENU - Flat Rate Testing
Planning your game’s budget can be complicated and daunting. We offer a comprehensive testing package for a simple flat rate of $750 per experience in The Sandbox. That’s up to 50% off our hourly rate!*
This includes a 1 hour consultation call and our standard regiment of tests that we perform on any experiences going into The Sandbox’s official events and seasons. It is recommend to start this process a month in advance of your event launch to give time for any changes you want to make based on our feedback. Re-testing for bug fixes and other changes is included up to the max times below.
[UX] User Experience Test
6 hours max (testing time depends on the game length - intended for mostly complete games)
Two or more playtesters complete your game, reporting how long events took and giving a detailed score on 26 data points. Thorough bug notes and feedback are provided with video and screenshots plus recommended solutions.
[PT] Performance Test
1 hour max (test typically runs 10-15 minutes each on three benchmark systems)
We use a standardized system for measuring the FPS, CPU/GPU/RAM usage, and load times on both low and high-end computers.
[TC] Test Case
2 hours max (testing time depends on the game length - intended for complete games)
This is a checklist to see if your game conforms to the same standards as official content produced by The Sandbox. Over 100 questions searching for common issues, event specific requirements, experience page completion, and more.
[LC] Live Check
Free Bonus: as soon as the event begins we will play the game once through to make sure everything is still working okay.
We conduct UX Tests with multiple players of varying playstyles and skill levels to give a well rounded assessment of your game and how it could be improved.
* Actual saving varies on how long testing takes. Price is based on minimum time.
We use request.finance (referral link) for invoicing. This flexible payment system can accept a wide variety of fiat and crypto options, including USD through bank transfer or Stripe, and SAND, ETH, or USDC through Polygon or Ethereum networks. We require 50% of our quote up front, and the remainder within 10 days of completion. Any additional work past quoted time limits will increase the bill and requires written approval from client by email before the added work is performed.
4
2025 QA SERVICES MENU - à la carte pricing $160 per hour
Times are estimates based on our past experience of how long it generally takes to complete a single 1x1 LAND game, and not a quote on your exact case. Single LANDs in The Sandbox typically take less than one hour to complete on a player’s first try.*
[LD] Level Design Review
8 - 16 hours (depending on the game length - intended for incomplete games)
Our expert playtesters will give your rough draft project multiple playthroughs and thorough analysis of your narrative, art direction, level design, and game mechanics. This will help guide your early decisions and set the game on a path for success.
[AR] Asset Review
4 hrs per 100 assets (on average - more complex assets take longer)
Our VoxEdit experts will examine your library of assets and check for optimization of node and face counts, z-fighting, and checking for other problem areas to improve.
[UX] User Experience Test
4 - 8 hours per session (depending on the game length - intended for mostly complete games)
Two or more playtesters complete your game, reporting how long events took and giving a detailed score on 26 data points. Thorough bug notes and feedback are provided with video and screenshots plus recommended solutions from our expert game builders. We advise more sessions after making changes to your game.
[UX] Extra Analysis
Add-on to UX Test
Some bugs are harder to figure out, or maybe your team is struggling with an issue that we didn’t encounter in a playtest. As part of your UX Test, you can ask us about these specific issues and we’ll examine possible causes and note them in our feedback.
Asset Reviews can be a simple check for possible performance issues, but they can also include art direction feedback from one of The Sandbox’s most successful artists.
Alex has worked with high profile brands like RTFKT, art collectors like Pranksy, collaborated with artists like XCOPY, managed the Creator Fund and founded The Sandbox’s staff artist workgroup “Cell X”.
* If your game typically takes over an hour to play, we recommend putting in chapter select options. This will help our testers jump to the right part of your game when performing repeated tests. We also recommend leaving this option in for players while The Sandbox does not yet have a save-game feature.
5
2025 QA SERVICES MENU - à la carte pricing $160 per hour
[PT] Performance Test
1 hour
We use a standardized system for measuring the FPS, CPU/GPU/RAM usage, and load times on both low and high-end computers.
[TC] Test Case
1 - 2 hours (depending on the game length - intended for complete games)
This is a checklist to see if your game conforms to the same standards as official content produced by The Sandbox. Over 100 questions searching for common issues, event specific requirements, experience page completion, and more.
[BA] Break Attack
4 - 8 hours per session (depending on the game length - intended for complete games)
We will be brutal to your game. Our best speedrunners and most aggressive playtesters will try every trick they know to break your game mechanics. We’ll find hard locks that prevent game completion, or shortcuts that cheat the timer and ruin the leaderboard. We will make your game cry for mercy and then help you patch it up.
[LP] Live Playtest
2 Playtesters in a Discord, Google Meet, or Zoom call for 1-2 hours
This is how it all started, playing your games on The Sandbox Live Stream. Observe two of our playtesters give live feedback as they play your game. Ask us questions and get immediate answers. We will record the session so you can refer back to it.
We are always looking for new ways to improve our services. If you are looking for a type of service not offered here, ask us about it and we’ll see what we can do. All of these tests are the same kinds that we run for official Sandbox and Partner content.
We can smell the computer smoking from here! Our Performance Tests come with an expert assessment of what could be fixed to help your game perform better.
Nothing makes a creator ponder quite like a Live Playtest. Seeing how players make decisions and interpret your designs can be the key to unlocking an amazing experience.
6
CASE STUDY 1 Quests of Triloga - Last Minute Corrections
Quests of Triloga by Parapluie Studio had beautiful art direction, exciting level design, and novel boss mechanics. But when The Council was assigned to test it for Alpha Season 3, it was nearly unplayable. The switch from Game Client 0.6 to 0.7 had brought new features, as well as new problems.
Players would respawn inside the ground after dying, a companion wouldn’t interact correctly with a puzzle mechanic, and rotating platforms in lava were spaced too far apart, demonstrating how jumping had changed with the update.
With only a couple weeks before launch, we were able to assess all of the issues and help the Parapluie team find good solutions to make the game playable and fun again in 0.7.
With a new directive from The Sandbox COO Sebastien to find and squash exploits that skew the Alpha Season 3 leaderboard, The Council found 4 critical weaknesses that would allow players to bypass puzzles for faster completion times. The developer pushed a high quality product live as a result.
7
CASE STUDY 2 Statue of Zeus - From Worst Case to Success
The Council was able to begin testing vEmpire DAO’s “SevenWonders - Statue of Zeus”, only a couple weeks before it’s hard-set launch in Alpha Season 3. Immediately, The Council dug in and identified the critical corrections needed before release.
The narrative was nonexistent, dialogue was barely intelligible, quests were boring, assets had questionable designs, and the map was bland and way too big for the lack of content. In a meeting with the project leader, we discovered that the original builders were not in the picture anymore, so what we were testing was an incomplete rough draft.
Motivated by our constructive criticism and the urgency of the release date, vEmpire hired SandStorm to rush in and save the day. This team of about 8 expert creators totally changed the game from a discarded mess into a vibrant and exciting experience.
We worked closely with SandStorm to rapidly iterate on feedback and squash bugs. In just two weeks of development from SandStorm and testing from The Council, we were able to proudly present an exhilarating game.
8
CASE STUDY 3 Testing Yields Profit through Live Streams
Not long after Joseph joined Alex to host The Sandbox official Live Stream, Game Jams became a regular community staple. Winners were able to earn $SAND and NFTs for creating high quality content in The Sandbox Game Maker.
Alex and Joseph started testing game jam entries live on stream, giving constructive criticism and impromptu game mechanic tutorials.
SEVEN of the top ten winners in the second game jam had their entries critiqued on stream, with three winners becoming full time staff at The Sandbox. Several others went on to join the Game Maker Fund as paid creators, or formed their own independent studios.
�We are empowering talented creators to�build viable career paths in The Sandbox.
9
TEAM HISTORY / ABOUT THE FOUNDERS
Alex and Joseph know just about everything there is to know about The Sandbox, as veterans of the platform and both acting as the public “face” of The Sandbox Game for years.
Alex joined The Sandbox Creator Fund at its inception in 2018 and joined staff full time in early 2020. As Lead Partnership artist, he produced artwork and game demos that landed collaborations with Smurfs, Care Bears, Ubisoft, Deadmau5, RTFKT, XCOPY, and many more.
Creating the first tutorials for VoxEdit, the GameMaker, and The Sandbox Marketplace, Alex has also worked alongside the development teams, testing, troubleshooting, and proposing new features for the full-stack of The Sandbox suites. He worked to hire and manage over a dozen Creator Fund artists into full time staff positions.
Joseph was an early viewer of Alex’s weekly livestreams for The Sandbox. Already an experienced eSports broadcaster, podcaster, and journalist, Joseph soon joined Alex as a co-host. For the next two years, they cultivated a dedicated following, and opened the gate to many new creators who would eventually become ambassadors and staff in The Sandbox as well as creating early partner studios on the platform.
Alex and Joseph have earned the respect of creators on The Sandbox ecosystem for their tireless enthusiasm for the possibilities of Web3 and all the opportunities The Sandbox can provide. They are feared for their ability to break apart games and loved for their gentle guidance on how to fix them.
Alex
CEO/Creative Director
kamisawze.eth
Joseph
COO/CFO
thevisionex.eth
© 2025 The Council QA LLC