134.

[coraeis]

As a "man of leisure," as they would say, I've the perhaps unfortunate luxury of messing with things that otherwise might not be worth the time. Google's new toy, Lively, is the latest on this list. This isn't to say that it's not worth it, but as it was announced for public beta just last week, I'm in the camp

Comments

[tarrsk]

it sounds like what you'd get if you mashed second life and mii's together.

one question i have that pertains to both lively and second life: what is the point? i don't mean that in a snarky fashion, but rather in the sense that programs are designed to fulfill a function, and it seems to me that both of these are attempting to accomplish several different functions simultaneously, and end up doing all of them poorly. they make crappy games, because the graphics and interface are poor, and because you end up exploring what amounts to a Douchebags of the World simulator. they're also crappy social networking devices, because they lack the easy access to information of interest that facebook and myspace provide.

[coraeis]

Understandable. Again, though I don't have any experience first-hand with Second Life (oh noes! I has no clue!), I do reiterate that I don't see them as parallel/rival programs at all, nor are they actual games (especially Lively) at the moment. That lack of purpose is really what I'm having problems with for Lively--there is very little in the way of meaningful action, and what significance there is remains buried beneath the whole incredulous "Really? They give me a chat room?" sensation. What I have gathered is that Second Life, despite its surface shortcomings, allows a great deal of user participation, with user content and user content economies (Linden Dollars) being its main selling points. I won't hazard a "convenient reference" comparison here, since that aspect I've heard nothing about...really, though, I think there's something to be said about text presentation, and how (gasp) not everything has to be graphically fancy. The text field has earned its keep for a long while, and I don't see it going elsewhere

[coraeis]

I also glaringly forgot to mention that Lively is in sore need of User permissions for emotes and actions. A number of character actions, like smooching, kicking, etc, can be performed on other avatars, and there's no setting to curtail that.

One year later...

[coraeis]

...I put the final nail in the coffin by mentioning that Lively closed on Dec. 31, 2008. Who knew? Not me.