Some Lively advice by Garret Bakalava
July 10, 2008
Some of the best waves seen in Second Life, Las Arenas Tosadas
To preface my “Lively” review, I must add this disclaimer: “Lively” is only the second virtual world I have “boldly entered” unless you count George W. Bush’s version of the world (which would be a much better metaphor if indeed it truly was a “world” one could log out of, permanently canceling account and continue to breathe. But I can’t say I actually entered his world; I just sort of got stuck in it like the rest of us.
There are probably 1,000s of reasons why Google’s launch of their virtual space “Lively” will not impact Linden Lab, which is probably why we all heard a collective sigh of relief emanating from San Francisco, USA Tuesday, and then received a loving letter from M Linden on the official blog on Wednesday.
I would like to save as many readers from my experience and/or improve the experience of those residents who are going to try it out anyway. So, here’s a partial list of reasons why “Lively” isn’t even in the same league as Second Life.
1. The name
. I am sorry but whoever’s collective or individual decision to call the worst lag this long- time SL resident has ever experienced, shy of being ghosted, a name like “Lively” must not have thought that through.
2. Walking. It took me at least 30 minutes to learn how to move my av. I say move because I can’t say that I ever mastered actually controlling the movement of my av, I just got lucky a few times. The great thing about it was I actually got to type this sentence: “Grace, (Mc Dunough) please teach me how to walk.”
3. Poseballs. Lack thereof. Building tools. Lack thereof. Need I say more? What I did enjoy was the two minute debate that went something like this: “Whichever VW comes up with the best building tools will rule the metaverse . To which I said, “No, whichever VW has the best poseballs.” Unfortunately the “Lively” viewer is so bad and the communication tools so unwieldy that I don’t know who won the debate since I only saw part of the conversation and alas, I didn’t know that closing my browser page logs one out of “Lively”, so I lost my chat log and those aren’t archived. (Google knows how to archive chat, I know they do, so what’s up with that!?)
What a pathetic shame that you have to bring your real life political slant into a story about a virtual world.
Shame really - I wanted to read the article. But since I see now that you have an agenda and obviously highly skewed perspective on things, I've decided might as well never read your stuff.
Shame really.
Posted By:
Ari | Friday, July 11, 2008 09:37 AM
/me wonders why Ari thinks Garret's view is slanted. I think Garret was very clear that for those people used to complex virtual worlds with a lot of tools available will not be happy with lively. And, being corrected, "It's a room not a sim??" Come on! It's a SIMULATION of a room. Therefore, it's a SIM. Well done Garret. Thanks for saving me the headache.
Posted By:
Delaynie Barbosa | Monday, July 21, 2008 01:28 AM
Ari's just upset because there's a crack at Bush and I think Ari must be one of those few remaining neo-con apologetics cum bush sycophants. lulz.
Posted By:
Tama Go | Saturday, July 26, 2008 03:57 PM
Oh my. After reading your article I just had to check out Lively for myself; partly to see if I could find anything more enjoyable about it now I knew what to expect and partly because I couldn't believe there would be no building materials for this virtual world.
I created a room, stuck some prefab items in it and tried to work out how I could stop myself from looking like a pig in a straw hat. It was awful!
If you can't create things, can't see what's going on properly and can't do anything more than sit in a glorified chatroom then what can you do? Not a lot, it seems.
The only thing I can say about Lively is that it ran okay on my 2Ghz XP system. Given that there was nothing to make me want to run Lively in the first place, running well isn't a great achievement.
I hope it gets better in the future because competition with SL will make SL better, but I think this is a flash in the pan.
Posted By:
April Kohl | Monday, August 04, 2008 11:51 AM
;)
