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LOS
ANGELES—As if Google didn’t have a strong enough hold on
the planet, Tuesday it has launched its own world—a
virtual world, to be exact. Lively, which Google likes
to call a “virtual experience,” allows you to create an
avatar, decorate your own virtual room, invite friends
to your room and do things you’ve always dreamed of,
like blow up oil barrels on a deserted island.
Unlike
popular virtual worlds such as Second Life, Lively
doesn’t require you to download new software. All you
need is a browser plug-in. The service is distributed
more widely than Second Life: Its rooms will live on Web
pages on Facebook and other sites, so you might stumble
across them when browsing the Internet. Rooms can be
private spaces, with entry by invitation only, or
open-topic rooms, where you can meet people interested
in discussing topics you enjoy, like Angelina Jolie,
Jennifer Aniston or Google. It also ties into other
Google services. You can stream YouTube videos into your
virtual living room or post your Picasa pictures on your
walls.
“Our
intent is to be part of the users’ everyday experience,”
said Niniane Wang, an engineering manager at Google who
helped create Lively. “We designed it to be easy to
use.”
An early
look into Lively suggests that Google succeeded at that
mission. It’s easy to choose avatars from a number of
different options, including a turban-wearing bear. It’s
easy to change their clothes, hair color and skin color.
It’s easy to drag and drop furniture and lava lamps to
position them around your room. Want your turban-wearing
bear to wave to the hot mama across the room? Just type
\wave. Want him to giggle? Just type \laugh.
Lively
looks hip, too. It’s sort of a combination between anime
and a Disney movie, with wide-eyed avatars and colorful,
angular scenery. Chat bubbles are brightly colored and
attached to avatars with long stems.
All of
which leads to the big question: Is Lively going to be
the site that finally brings virtual worlds into the
mainstream? Probably, said Chris Sherman, executive
director of Virtual Worlds Management, an industry trade
group. “With a player like Google jumping into this,
you’re going to see a lot more people understand this
space and pay attention to it,” he said.
Lively’s
popularity with the virtual world crowd will depend on a
few factors. Will Google allow avatars to buy and sell
virtual goods? Will there be any currency at all in
Lively? Will users be able to create things from
scratch?
A Google
spokesman said that there isn’t any currency in Lively,
but that users will be able to add objects from Lively’s
catalog to their rooms free of charge. And users can’t
yet create their own items but should be able to down
the road.
With all
these features and more rolling out later, Lively is
likely to give Second Life and other popular virtual
worlds a run for their money, said Michael Gartenberg,
research director at Jupiter Research. That’s because,
like most Google products, Lively is free. Second Life
charges $9.95 a month for premium membership.
Second
Life isn’t going to sit tight while other virtual worlds
try to attract mainstream users, though. It announced
Tuesday that it had worked with IBM to figure out how to
teleport avatars from one virtual world to another, a
development it called “a historic day for Second Life,
and for virtual worlds in general.” That means that down
the line, an avatar in a world such as Second Life might
be able to visit a virtual world such as Habbo with
ease. (Los Angeles Times) |
