Google Lively Does Not Make Me Lively

I like to think I’m an okay gamer. I’ve been playing video games since the Atari 2600, so I can move fairly well within virtual worlds. I can Crippling Slash enemy monks in Guild Wars just as well as I can hoverboard with friendly girls in There.

Maybe that’s why my expectations of Google Lively might seem a little high. Given that games are bigger than movies, however, those expectations could soon become merely average.

Frankly, I’m not impressed with Google’s first stab at a virtual world. Don’t get me wrong; I’m as big a Google fan as the next guy. They are the kings of all forms of aynchronous communication, from search to apps to ads to video.

Synchronous communication, however, is still too fast for their data mining and ad contextualization systems. That’s why GTalk never caught on, that’s why YouTube does not have live video, and that’s why Lively fails to captivate me.

The attempt at a gamelike world, coupled with the attempt at a Web mashup, creates something that’s a jack of both and a master of neither. It’s limited, it’s slow, it’s unresponsive, and it’s counterintuitive. It’s not chatty enough for chat, and it’s not game enough for gaming.

Maybe I shouldn’t expect so much from Lively yet, since it’s still in beta. Maybe Lively will finally offer the perfect fusion of the Web and the metaverse. Maybe all that will happen down the line.

Until then, I’m playing real MMOs.