Proving its Liveliness, Google launches a virtual world
If you visit Google Labs on a regular basis (and really, who doesn’t?) you might have noticed a recent addition: Lively.
Lively is Google’s answer to Second Life: A virtual world where people can interact on-line in rooms that are already created or created by themselves. The rooms hold up to 20 people at a time. These avatars can chat, place furniture and do some interaction like shaking hands, hugging and smashing people with giant anvils. More on that later.
This project, like so many others, is a result of Google’s “20 percent time” policy. Google workers spend 20% of their time at Google innovating and creating new products.
So is this some kind of “Second Life Killer”? No. There is no currency or a way to create new content for the world. Avatar creation is also very limited. There are not a lot of choices or ways to make the avatar really stand out. Second Life, in theory, allows thousands to interact at once while Lively only allows 20.
The biggest difference is that upon creating a “room” in Lively it can be embedded in a blog or other Website so that others can visit the room and, in theory, learn more about the creator and their personality. Another difference is that it works in IE or FireFox (Windows only right now) and doesn’t require a whole separate application like Second Life.
Additionally this works with Facebook accounts. So I could go into my Facebook account and create a room that my friends can see and interact in. In fact for the purposes of research for this blog (at least, that is the excuse I am using) I will be doing that. Facebook friends, you have been warned.
I did, briefly, enter the world to get a better idea of what it is like. Keeping in mind that this is Beta, the avatar creation tools are very limited, except for hair styles. It has a lot of hair styles.
The first room I entered was a small island that had, inexplicably, the song “If” by Bread playing. That song played over and over and over. That song does not deserve such a high level of replay.
After walking around and being confused at the large amount of furniture strewn around the island (the game does have furniture that can be placed around by users) I left. I moved on to a room that was a recreation of a room at the Google Headquarters. It was there that I was struck by a giant anvil by an unknown assailant. My avatar was squashed for a bit, but he recovered.
I only spent a short time in the world, enough to get an idea of the controls and what it all looked like. At this time I will spare you a review until I can spend more time in this world. Needless to say I will be keeping a close eye on this entry of Google’s. Not everything they have done has been a hit to be sure. However, when Google is involved, it is always worth watching.
Note: this was written by me and originally posted on the Rising Tide blog.
