When Google launched Lively, its web-based Second Life-esque virtual 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.
Right now, Google Lively is a Second Life clone. And an unremarkable one at that. But that’s now. In the future, they want it to be much, much more. Google’s Kevin Hanna has told GI.biz that it’s hoped that, somewhere down the line, Google Lively can become an “online games platform”, in which people can just switch on a PC and enter a “creative space”. And, once there, get away from what Hanna describes is a “corporate mentality” that’s “sucking the life out of what should be the most creative and innovative medium out there”. Basically, something like LittleBigPlanet or XNA. But courtesy of Google’s corporate mentality. As opposed to Sony’s or Microsoft’s corporate mentality.
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 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:
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.
