Playing in The Sandbox: A Look at The Notorious B.I.G. Collaboration ‘Breakin’ B.I.G.’
Along with Warner Music, you can teleport to the world of ‘90s hip-hop through the metaverse
While much of the emphasis on the metaverse has been its ability to provide interactive 3-D experiences on a massive scale, a new element has recently emerged as another benefit to creating and building in virtual worlds like The Sandbox: time travel.
For The Sandbox (a subsidiary of Animoca Brands) and Warner Music, that meant partnering with the estate of esteemed hip-hop legend Christopher Wallace—known professionally as Notorious B.I.G., or Biggie, — to create a 2-D-style arcade game where fans can venture back in time and immerse themselves in the 1990s music scene of Brooklyn, New York, where Biggie rose to fame before being shot to death in 1997.
The side-scrolling game allows players to become an up-and-coming rapper, interact with Biggie, and earn his respect—all while being exposed to his iconic discography. Players can then join the Warner Music Social Hub—also within The Sandbox—to connect with other fans and enjoy other music-related virtual experiences.
Fans will also have access to an exclusive Biggie-themed avatar collection, which will allow them to customize their digital identity in a way that showcases their fandom and celebrates his life.
“Our goal has always been to find unique ways to enhance the legacy of Christopher Wallace,” Elliot Osagie, chief strategy officer of The Notorious B.I.G. Estate, and founder and chief executive officer of Willingie and Benin City, said to me in a recent email correspondence. “Our challenge, along with other estates of artists who are no longer with us, is to utilize traditional and new forms of media, art, culture, entertainment and tech to continue to put their art in front of new generations and new audiences.”
The hope is that the “Breakin’ B.I.G.” experience will both captivate the interest of existing B.I.G. fans and help propel a new generation of fandom through exposure to the game and his music—an experience made possible through blockchain and web3 technology. It’s like the Tupac Shakur hologram performance at Coachella in 2012 but not as a one off, as a continuous experience for existing and new fans.
“The evolution of web products now allows us to not only achieve that, but to do it in an interactive way that gives users the opportunity to experience the artist in ways that emulate the experiences that would be possible if they were still here,” Osagie said.
Future metaverse experiences around Biggie could be on the horizon, as The Sandbox is still a platform in its Alpha stage. According to Sebastien Borget, chief operating officer and co-founder of The Sandbox, the company hasn’t fully launched everything but expects to have a full public launch in 2025.
“The goal is to create a long-lasting connection with a community—one that doesn’t last just seconds like in traditional web2 social media, but more like minutes if not hours,” Borget said in an interview. “Having the opportunity to immerse users and offer them content to explore, engage with, or even build themselves is really what we offer to brands. It leads to a model called ORM—Owner Relationship Management—where rewarding the user with NFTs [nonfungible tokens] is a way to create a link to engage them afterwards.”
For Biggie fans, that link is through acquiring unique digital collectibles within the “Breakin’ B.I.G.” world and through the ability to purchase one of the unique Biggie avatars.
“The metaverse allows users to own their digital assets and their digital identities with an avatar, which can be used across multiple digital worlds,” Borget said. “With The Sandbox, we enable users to create their avatars for free, or they can purchase and own an avatar from an official celebrity collection—like with the Biggie-themed avatars. Each collection contains 2,000 to 10,000 unique avatars that a player can own to use as their digital identity, play games and explore 3-D virtual worlds and experiences.”
While it remains to be seen if the “Breakin’ B.I.G.” experience will usher in a new wave of 3-D time travel for other artists and brands, it certainly creates precedent for the possibilities we could see in the future.
According to Borget, The Sandbox has more than 500 experiences that have been made by its community of creators, with that number expected to double or triple this year. At the end of 2023, Sandbox landowners were able to publish their own experiences on their land—a move that’s expected to help propel the increase in user generated content.
For The Notorious B.I.G. Estate, the plan is to continue utilizing existing and emerging web3 tech to keep generations of music fans aware of Biggie’s impact on music and hip-hop culture.
“We have a few innovations coming to market next year that accompany new music from Biggie,” Osagie said. “It’s better than anything we’ve ever done before and the focus is global, so stay tuned for that.”