I am excited about Lively. It has been a long time since something kept me awake at night voluntarily (so work counts not), and kept me glued to my seat until I had a backache. When Galen first told me about it in the Straits Times, the article made it sound like it was something I’d like to try out, eventually. The buzz on Plurk, however, pushed the curiosity level up to the “Try it NOW” threshold.

Google’s done a pretty good job so far, for a beta version!

Navigation wise, Lively does not detract much from most traditional 3D games. Movement was fairly intuitive. I think Second Life had a good thing going when they put newbies on the beginner’s help island first though, before graduating them to the Real World outside. There would be “help” around from volunteers to clue you in.

I started out on the Singapore Island, and to be marooned on an island without any form of official help means you take more time to figure things out. Look for the Summerisque avatar, if you’d like to add me!

Here are my 5 Cs for Lively! Chat, Clothing, Communication, Community, Connecting, Construction….

Chat
I had some issues with the way the chat bubbles were displayed because I kept my working space open and I could not really see all the conversations that were going on. I did not figure I could close it until sometime later. Given that chat and communication is going to be an integral part of Lively, I think it could be done better! I don’t mind a traditional rolling text at the bottom layout, really.

Clothing
Typical of most females, when you’re on a beach in shoes and a really ugly skirt, the first thing is to get dressed for the occasion. I went shopping in the free (but limited) Lively Catologue. Here’s where Second Life wins hands down though – users have more ability to create.

I must say Lively lowers the learning curve and indirectly barriers of entry for its ease of use, so hopefully that will entice more users to stay!

If you squint hard enough at the picture above, you can Where’s Wally Uniquefrequency, for some bizarre reason standing on the deck chair.

Dinosaurs appeared out of nowhere suddenly. Easter eggs from the Island room default shell? Interesting. (Learn the Lingo: Rooms are created starting with Shells).

Communicating: Aye, I hear ya
Right, it wasn’t till later I realized the sound had been muted on the computer. Was pleasantly surprised to find decent ambient audio work on the various rooms, although my avatar had a horribly annoying laugh. (Try it – when you type “haha” or “lol”, your character actually automatically does the motions). There are a whole lot of other actions – kicking, body slamming, hugging and so on…

Community
Lively can only work when there are communities. I dropped in on a couple of guys doing up their Coffee Break room. The room was abuzz with activity and everyone was working together, some people slacking on the sofas, milling around – not entirely atypical of any real life situation.

Connecting with the rest of Web 2.0

You can configure TV sets to play YouTube videos! Linking up with already popular platforms never hurts.
You can, also hyperlink all objects to the WWW.’

I see a lot of linking potential here. Wouldn’t it be cool to link up with magazines, books, stores, etc (not that different from like Second Life though!)

I decided that exploring was not going to be enough for me, so I got down and dirty creating my own room.
Have always dreamt of owning a beautiful place were friends could hang out, chill and just socialize, so the rooftop pad was a natural choice!

Lively residents need drinks! We have no food items.

…more to come when the place is spruced up.

Cloning and Construction
There are some algorithums that need to be figured out here. I kept losing my furniture to the sky (some of them are still floating around, somewhere!). I also thought it would be cool to have a plant on the wall, but only because you can place items on any surface. This resulted in a lot of difficulty in moving my items around.

We also need a duplicate/clone object function! Like perhaps clicking on an object and hitting ‘alt’ drag to clone it!

You know something has got potential when the invasion of smut comes along. Jim Collins says that businesses can learn a lot from the non profit sector. I think there’s a lot to learn from the porn industry too. Look at these guys! They’re loosely structured for major flexibility, appear on almost any popular platform you can think of (both traditional and digital mediums), and they do it fast.

And they work around the limitations of the catalouge too because I sure did NOT see any posters like that in the shop. They probably embedded Youtube videos, or their own pictures on a plasma. Smart. I haven’t gotten round to visiting these rooms though, maybe when I’ve done up my own place. Ah the beauty of virtual reality, where you can factor out the safety factor in ethnographic studies!

After all that’s said and done, I will ignore the fact that Google have not (yet) released a Lively version for the Mac. Lively, however, is well worth hijacking someone else’s PC for.

Pros

1. 3D Meshes load much faster than Second Life. (However, apparently, loading was pretty slow on other machines).
2. Easier learning curve compared to Second Life, and thus will hopefully catch on in this part of the world so I don’t have to wake up at unearthly hours to mingle with the residents.
3. Great place for community building.
4. Stickiness factor: It gets addictive, but will only work if friends join in the fun!
5. Brand name: It’s from GOOGLE. I expect only better things when the beta version is improved.

Cons Could be better

1. Start noobs on a “help” island/ run them through a quick compulsory start up introduction, because none of us are going to read instructions when there’s a game to get to.
2. Content Creation – yes, some of us (outside Google) can do 3D modelling and texturing, and yes, the catalogue is not looking too good at the moment.
3. Flexibility of avatars pales in comparison to Second Life, where literally, you could extend or shorten your limbs.
4. Clone function for (free) objects: Too annoying to have to go back and ‘buy’ more items from the Catalouge. It’s free anyway, right? So I should be able to duplicate as many as I want.
5. Where is my food??? Drinks?? I can’t offer any of my guests anything at the moment!!
6. Better Chat logging functions
7. Would be cool if I could upload my own ambient music/songs to my room.
8. Second life has its own timezone – a Day/night function would rock! (If only because I could have cool lights on my Bachelorette pad. A universal timezone also makes it easier to meet people from various parts of the globe.

I will end this off with something I’ve shared before on social networks. Depending on how Google builds on this, there might be one more platform to add to this very entertaining video.

…Back to creating my room!