Google Lively To Be an Online Gaming Platform

GamesIndustry.biz recently interviewed Kevin Hanna, creative director for Google Lively, about the virtual environment's beginnings and the plans for its future. Earlier this month, he announced that Lively would open to developers, and now he says the long-term goal is for Lively to be "used as an online games platform." Hanna goes on to say: "I'd like for it to be invisible, where, when it makes sense to have 3D aspects of the web, that everyone will have already downloaded the plug-in, it's one of the first things you do when you install your machine, and you're able to just jump around and play in a creative space. I feel like a big chunk of the games industry out there has a corporate mentality where you're first to be second, and I've been there, where they say, 'Make sure you include this aspect, and this aspect, and this aspect, to ensure that we have an 80 per cent market share.' And it's sucking the life out of what should be the most creative and innovative medium out there."

Comments

Wow.

[nawcom]

I wonder how many markets Google will get into. I can't wait until Google starts working on their female douche product line. hehe.

Re:Wow.

[ivandavidoff]

I can't wait until Google starts working on their female douche product line. hehe.

That would lend a whole new meaning to "googling yourself".

Or wait, maybe not.

Re:Wow.

[religious freak]

You underpromise and overdeliver if you're a developer... you do the opposite if you're in marketing.

Re:Wow.

[philspear]

Yes, like Corvettes, Axe body spray, hair gel for guys, gold medalions, tight white tank tops (for guys)...

Re:Wow.

[AKAImBatman]

I just yanked this from a report on one of the sites I operate:

Firefox 63.32%
Internet Explorer 16.33%
Safari 7.43%
Chrome 6.36%

(For the record, the site is nothing that would predispose it to FireFox users over IE users. Unless you count video game players as "pre-disposed".)

For Chrome to have grabbed that much market share so quickly is impressive. So "successful" is a perfectly acceptable tag. What remains to be seen is if Google will build on that success or let it flounder.

Re:Wow.

[LandDolphin]

(For the record, the site is nothing that would predispose it to FireFox users over IE users. Unless you count video game players as "pre-disposed".)

depends on the types of video games. IF the games require one to upgrade their hardware, then yeah. They are going to be more tech savy and perhaps more likely to change from IE to FirFox.

Acquisitions Leading Towards 3d

[mfh]

Valve denied it was being purchased by Google, but it leads me to believe that the opposite may be true. Time will tell.

Re:Acquisitions Leading Towards 3d

[gEvil (beta)]

Valve denied it was being purchased by Google, but it leads me to believe that the opposite may be true.

Valve's planning on buying Google?!? Folks, you heard it here first. Now go spread the word!

Re:Acquisitions Leading Towards 3d

[gad_zuki!]

>Valve denied it was being purchased by Google, but it leads me to believe that the opposite may be true.

Whoa, I knew Steam was a high-margin money maker, but who knew Value would be buying Google soon?! Between Google's forever tracking cookie and Steam's DRM, it could lead to incredible heights of corporate douchebaggery!

Lively

[necro81]

Well, of course online gaming is going to be lively. You wouldn't expect Google Bore (beta) to be a force here.

Anyone else think of VRML

[elrous0]

"when it makes sense to have 3D aspects of the web, that everyone will have already downloaded the plug-in, it's one of the first things you do when you install your machine, and you're able to just jump around and play in a creative space"

Everytime I hear someone propose something like this, I think of VRML and the failed (and misguided) attempt to reskin the web into something it's not.

Re:Anyone else think of VRML

[PeanutButterBreath]

I think the key here is "when it makes sense", which is not very often IMO. Trying to turn the entire web into a 3D interactive environment is a lousy idea. On the other hand, being able to see 3D representations of certain objects (say products in an on-line store) does make sense. I *hope* that this is the kind of "sense" that is being considered here.

Re:Anyone else think of VRML

[FiloEleven]

I fail to see how learning Assembly in 3D would be any more useful or any less painful.

The Matrix

[megamerican]

Does anyone else think that this sounds like the beginning of the creation of The Matrix?

Re:Snow Crash?

[lilomar]

Dude, what you are describing...
SecondLife

Re:Shockwave 3D?

[morgan_greywolf]

just hope they do better than Shockwave 3D.

That's not very difficult. That's almost like saying you'd hope they'd do better than Microsoft Bob. Almost.

Re:Snow Crash?

[Goaway]

You know, that's what Second Life is. Been around for years now.

And it's horrible.

Re:Yeah but...

[genner]

Yeah but does it run Linux?

And the answer:

Requires Windows Vista/XP with Internet Explorer or Firefox

So....it doesn't run on Chrome?

First REAL attempt at a Metaverse?

[Cornflake917]

Second-life's attempt to be the world's Metaverse turned out to be just a huge advertising/hacking cluster fuck. Not saying that that Lively won't be a advertising/hacking cluster fuck but at least it sounds it would be more open to programmers, which will allow for more diverse possibilities, so there could be just as much good stuff as bad.

Re:Snow Crash?

[Xelios]

Second Life is like the Pong of virtual worlds. It's the first step toward what was described in Snow Crash, driven by profit instead of an open source, open world approach.

Re:Linux Support?

[not already in use]

That's the great thing about Linux -- Choice! Like, the choice to use an operating system with a marginal market share not likely to get commercial support!

GOOGLE = SKYNET

[tiecoolguy]

It is funny to say, but think about it. Google has a mass of information that covers the entire web, including personal data about you and me. If it wanted to, google could track its users of the new google phone. Heck i have google maps on my blackberry, so they could track me too.

Is Slashdot...

[diablovision]

Is Slashdot now becoming the marketing arm of Google? I swear this is like the 90th article about some new whiz-bang software they developed. There are other companies writing software!

The need to redesign the UI from scratch

[argent]

Out of all the 3d user interfaces I've used, this is probably the worst. There's no connection between you and your avatar at all, and even getting your avatar to walk along a straight line is frustrating... the normal motion is to have you avatar teleport from one piece of furniture to another while you pan around at a distance.

If simple movement is so hard, how on earth do they expect people to use it for a gaming platform?

Google Lively To Be an Online Gaming Platform

[melted]

Here's the translation from the corporate speak:

"We've released it and no one bit. We have no idea what to do with it, so let us see if we can use other people's ideas for free."

Anyone here actually tried it?

[Light303]

I read about lively quite a time ago ... but tried it just now to see how it feels.

And i must say ... it sucks ... big time!

If they do really want to make anything fun of it ... it looks like starting from scratch would be a good idea.

Why ?

- Its slow (on a dual core system that runs cyrsis just fine)
- Loading takes ages
- Controll via point and click not well done
- Camera controll annoying
- Overall usability far away from google standards

Re:I Told You So. Now What?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Nothing is stopping Google from turning these two applications into something better than Second Life.

Well, except that Second Life already exists, and Lively sucks balls compared to it.

Lively has no source code available, that I can find. The closest thing I could find has barely started to reverse engineer Lively, and appears to have no actual code written. And the official client is XP/Vista, IE/Firefox, nothing else.

Contrast this to Second Life, which has an open source client, with officially supported Windows/Mac/Linux versions.

From what other people are telling me, it doesn't get any better once you install -- crappy UI, and no real content creation for end-users.

Google easily could beat Second Life, if they wanted to. It's obvious from this pathetic attempt that they won't be doing so anytime soon.

One more thing, from TFA:

Over the long term, Hanna said that while he couldn't speak for Google's official stance, his hope is that Lively becomes "invisible" as much as Flash, Java or HTML are as the backbone of the web experience, that it becomes a "core architecture."

Ok, HTML and JavaScript are core achitectures. Java has a shot, being that it's now open source and reasonably mature.

But if they aspire to become another Flash, no thanks. Flash is cross-platform, at least, but proprietary, limited architectures (where's my 64-bit), slow as hell (Flash 10 will finally be hardware-accelerated), and poorly integrated (try right-clicking anywhere in Flash, vs anywhere in your browser).