Kotaku: lively

Google Kills Its Second Life-like Lively

Michael McWhertor — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:00:52 MST

When Google launched Lively, its web-based, browser-embeddable, Second Life-esque virtual world chat space, we said we'd "check back in with it soon" and "dig deeper to see what Google has in store." That was a lie. We never had any intention of firing up Lively on our Windows XP box ever again after hitting Save on the post. Fortunately, we'll never be tempted to make right on that fib, as Lively will never make it past beta, nor will it survive into 2009. Google announced it was shutting down Lively at the end of the year today.

The official word on cancellation from the Lively Team was that Google wanted to "ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business."

While interesting as a technical project — it let users import photos from Google owned Picasa and YouTube into virtual rooms — it wasn't much more than Second Life minus the scope. And while Fahey may disagree, Second Life's not particularly interesting to begin with.

The premature death of Lively may make the argument that Google should, could or would get into game development more moot, it at least gives Sony's upcoming Home project one less virtual world competitor.

Lively no more [Google]

Forbes: Google Could Be Games Publisher

Stuart Houghton — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:20:00 MDT

Chris Morris of Forbes magazine thinks that Google should try its luck at publishing video games. The search engine behemoth has put some serious research time into advertising within games and certainly has the resources to acquire a developer or three.

As well as the rather ill-received virtual world Lively, the article points out that Google already has some technologies that could mix well with gaming. Google Earth could make a for an excellent flight sim (in fact, it already has) while streetview might be useful in a GTA-like game.

I'd love to see the Google brain trust attack a problem like enemy AI or random terrain generation. It's just a shame we will have to wade through adverts to get there.

Will Google Play Games? [Forbes]

A Quick Q&A On Google Lively

Maggie Greene — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:30:00 MDT

A few weeks ago, Bonnie Ruberg wrote about a few gripes with Google Lively's user interface and chat system; Mark Young, the user experience designer for Lively, quickly got back regarding the complaints and the two shared an interesting little Q&A on future plans for making Lively more user friendly. On the topic of what bits of the interface are still being tweaked, Young had this to say:

Everything. Much of the GUI is not as complete or polished as planned in designs. Room creation/publishing/decorating could be a lot easier than it is now - we're working on that. Social functionality needs to be built out further - finding friends and inviting friends should be easier and more productive. There are some aspects of the client that limit how flexible it is as an element of web design - we would like to have it be more malleable in the hands of web designers.

There is a big demand for the ability to create content. We have a tool that our artists and partners use to publish content after its been exported from off-the-shelf DCC tools like Max, Maya and SketchUp. The publishing tool needs a redesign and documentation before its ready for public consumption. However, UI design and development for that is a simpler task than ironing out the policies for user-generated content.

Ruberg's initial complaints centered around Lively's lack of support for cybersex, but she coyly notes that "Earlier conversations with Young may or may not have involved interface design changes specific to cybersex, but since Google has no official statement on sex in its virtual world, those comments will have to be left to your imaginations ...."

Q&A with Google Lively's User Experience Designer [Terra Nova]

Google Launches Its Own Second Life

Michael McWhertor — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:40:04 MDT

Google launched Lively today, a 3D virtual world that can best be described as the search and advertising giant's take on Second Life. Currently, the service is for Windows users only and requires Internet Explorer or Firefox, as well as a Google account, to take part in. We quickly downloaded and fussed about with Lively earlier this afternoon, a process that was rather simple, but did have a minor registration hiccup. It was also painfully slow on my Windows box, which is by no means state of the art.

Lively is already loaded with hundreds of virtual rooms of varying themes, not to mention thousands of furries, one of the stock avatars that one can then further customize. Navigating around the world, which also seems to feature some light game like elements, took some getting used to. The novelty wore of quickly for me, as chatting with strangers on the internet is more frightening than in real life, but we'll have to dig deeper to see what Google has in store.

We'll check back in with it soon.

Lively by Google [Lively - thanks, DaveKap!]