Google just launched a new product called Lively and, well, it’s pretty deadly. Yes, we know it’s a beta. But I haven’t experienced a more frustrating interface since attempting to win a cupie doll at the carvinal with a barely functional squirt gun. There is a lot of grief in the blogosphere and a lot of really dumb hype (mostly about pr0n) from “official” news sources. However - underneath all this bad are some strikingly good ideas.
What is Google Lively and what’s so frustrating?
Google Lively emerged from one of the so-called “20%” projects that Google employees are allowed to work on during the day unrelated to their tasks at hand. It’s basically flash-driven 3-D world with chat rooms and furniture. Sound exciting? It isn’t. The primary problem is that the human-computer interface is like a step backwards. If you are controlling a little animated guy in a 3-D world, then it better at least stand up to SNES or even Doom III. Lets not forget that games like World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto IV are redefining our concept of what it “means” to navigate an avatar around a virtual world. No, this image is not Google Lively (it is a cute self-interacting image from the equally unlively Runescape), and no, I am not going to attempt to embed this barely-working 3D world on GeekSouth. Maybe later.
Every “waiting to load” or jerking movement or bug in the interface feels like pure torture. Commentary from curious bystanders essentially is about how lame things are and “Where is the pr0n?” Hey, they wanted to compete with Second Life (wink wink nudge nudge). But lets just move past this and pretend that at some point in the future, Google Lively will be very smooth and easy to use at least…
Why else does it fail besides the choppiness?
The art. The world to me looks like something derived from Cartoon Network of the nineties. Because the avatars have a lot of complicated hugging and dancing movements, you can’t really customize them very much. Basically, generic white dude, generic black dude, and a kitten. And pretty dumb looking furniture that you couldn’t even find at Target. There is also the “rooms” that you create. Yes, it’s not one “massive” world but in fact a bunch of rooms that each person has the freedom to create. Almost every room is miniscule compared to Google’s room, which is a large multi-floor building surrounded by a large grounds. No, don’t even try going in there.
Obviously, there are going to be way more rooms that are available, way more furniture, etc. Lets move past this point and imagine that in the future, rooms will be well designed and larger and there will be so much furniture and “stuff” that you can decorate your room exactly how you want at least…
What exactly is the point?
User accounts. Google has decided their primary focus in the near term is getting everyone on the planet to create a Google Account. What happens after that or the reason you actually did it is not quite as important as the fact that you actually have one. Don’t have an account? Chances are you will soon. They can figure out how to profit later through a million different ways, primarily though their Adwords. There is also something else… something perhaps very powerful.
Anything revolutionary going on here?
I’ve read Google’s explanation of why they created it. I’ve read the analysis of why people think they created it. So far, the gist of the hype is that they want to create a virtual world like Second Life that is distributed instead of centralized. No “land grabs” or anything. Everyone can create a room. Anyone can search for types of rooms. It’s free to play. And, you dont’ have to install a huge program to play it. Finally, you can embed the rooms on your websites! To convince people to sign up for a Google Account!
But there is definitely something interesting happening that the net has never seen. It’s not new to introduce the idea that players can adapt the game they play. Custom levels have been around forever. It’s not new to embed video or even games on other websites. What is new (at least to me) is the concept of combining the web with user-generated content in custom virtual worlds.
When I said “furniture” earlier, what I really meant was “dynamic net-enabled objects.” For example, one object in Google Lively is a “picture frame.” Hilariously, when I struggled to place the object into a room, it ended up on the floor. Try as I might, I could not move it to a wall. Anyway, it was pretty easy to add images from my flickr account to the picture frame. So I had this pretty animated gallery of images in a picture frame! On the floor! Laugh as you might, the idea is pretty powerful. Pictures, video, games, web pages, chat, voice, documents, downloads, Google Apps, Google Ads, Google Earth, where does it end? Sadly, it’s a clearly a bit early and also a bit silly to try to fit the capabilities of PCs and the internet inside a tiny, choppy, poorly animated object. But what I wonder is… what happens when you embed Google Lively inside Google Lively.
Whoa……….
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