Posted 11/24/08 at 08:37:51 AM by Paul Lilly

Back in July when Google first launched its own version of Second Life called Lively, Maximum PC blogger Chris Moody wondered about its long-term success and whether it would ultimately prove a pop hit or a flop. Just shy of six months later and we already have our answer.

"It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads, and apps business," Google said on a blog post.

In other words, Google has decided to end its Lively experiment and will shut the service down at the end of the year. Those who worked on the project will be reassigned within the company, presumably on projects that won't share Lively's untimely demise.

So what exactly went wrong? Part of the problem can be attributed to what ArsTechnica describes as "an overall lack of polish." Spending some hands on time with the service, the news outlet noted frustratingly clunkly and erratic controls, poor camera movement, and actions such as hugs and choke holds missing their target. Or could it be that interest in virtual social worlds like Second Life and Lively are starting to wane?

Have a theory? Hit the jump and post your thoughts on Lively's demise.

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Posted 07/09/08 at 02:11:29 PM by Chris Moody

Google launched their take on Second Life called Lively. The idea behind both Lively and Second Life is to bring a better social dimension to online interaction, or chat in 3D basically. Better is the operative term here. Second Life didn’t hold any appeal for me, it got boring in very short order. I’m just not a sit and chat type person and listening to someone laughing repeatedly is so beyond lame that I would rather go deal with the wife’s “Honey do list” than socialize in Second Life. Give me good old IRC every time. Lively is on the same order of things.

Lively does however have different aspects to its similar approach. Where Second Life is an entire world, Lively is compartmentalized with rooms. I am sure that it would be fairly easy for Google to make that jump and sting the rooms together to be seamless, but it really doesn’t need that. I like the feel of Lively better. Avatars are a little more cartoon like than I remember in Second Life. There are a number of preprogrammed emotes set up for the characters, and there are sure to be more things added both by Google and users daily.

 Make the jump to see what else Lively has to offer. 

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