For quite some time, there’s been a parallel universe online with a ton of users and no real competition. Second Life was, well, your second life… a place to get away from the “meat world” and be someone else for a while. It still is, but now they have something to worry about. There’s only a few possible companies that have the resources and expendable cash to throw their hat into the ring. Google is one of those few and they’ve tossed their hat in with their own virtual world, Lively. It’s not much of a surprise that they’d play in this still very open arena. What did catch me off guard is the lack of publicity from a company positioned to turn the virtual worlds crowd upside down.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t really tried Second Life, but it’s not for lack of trying. I actually thought it looked pretty cool (and still do), but I couldn’t get it to install. Not only would it crash over and over again, but I found myself more frustrated just trying to get through to their support. Ultimately, I never got a response and gave up. Lively has its own problems, which I will get to, but it’s also still just in its infancy.

Get your new virtual life
What do you need to get started? Not much, really. One of the great ideas that makes me like Lively right off the bat is that it runs right in your web browser. The advantage of this is that it doesn’t suck up all your computer’s memory or require a powerful machine to play. Aside from a modern web browser, all you really need is a Google account and some free time. The Google account isn’t a bad idea, anyway. If you don’t have one already, you will be prompted to create one.

When you sign up, you create your Lively username that people will see and enter a couple other boring details. Then you get to dive right in and create your second you. This process begins with the selection of an avatar to represent you. The pickin’s are still pretty slim, but not horrible. One thing I found pretty interesting here was the ability to become male, female, or have your choice of a few different animals. If you ever wanted to live life as a pig, now is your chance.
Once you’ve chosen your avatar type, you need to refine it with some details. Start with a hair style and move on to your choice of pants, shirt, shoes, etc. When you’re all done, you’ve got this fully dressed avatar, ready to mingle with the crowd - or walk around aimlessly, clicking on things. The avatar options and finer detail choices still leave a lot to be desired. The selection process is pretty simple and the option variety is OK for the initial launch, but I really hope Google is working on rolling out more options as this thing grows. It’s still pretty new and too many of us look alike.

Walking, talking, dancing and fighting
Lively, just like any richly interactive experience, takes a bit of learning and some getting used to. Some things are intuitive and others aren’t. For example, to interact with a person or object, you just click on it. Simple enough. Try looking around and simple may not be the first word that enters your mind unless you enjoy flight simulators. Eventually, you get used to it, but it still doesn’t feel natural. What is pretty simple is the ability to drag yourself around. Click on your avatar, hold the mouse button down, and drag in the direction you want to go. Take it slow, though. You’re walking, not teleporting.

Once you’ve got your moves down, find a quiet corner and practice your animations. You can dance, applaud, body slam someone, flirt, you name it. Just right-click on your avatar and you are presented with a pretty healthy list of options.

Meet others and make friends (or enemies)
I met someone right away in Lively. I didn’t catch his name, but he beat the hell out of me while I was choosing pants. Rude, sure, but definitely not surprising. Any time you enter an environment in which anonymity is commonplace and even encouraged, you can expect to find people who never aged past 12 years old. The beating wasn’t as bad as the general demeanor of a lot of the people. In my first visit, Lively was only days old and it was full of these types of people. When I went back tonight, there were more rooms (including one called “Fight Club”) and a lot more people, most of whom were acting much more mature.

Getting to know people is pretty easy. Just walk right up, click on someone, and start chatting. You can send a private message by “whispering”, or you take a completely different approach and just start dancing with them. One thing I hope they add is the ability to ignore everyone else for a bit while I discover items, dance with someone, etc.

So far, I like Lively. While I may not have a lot of time for it, I can see myself relaxing in a new environment for a while after a long day. The installation process was very simple and impressed me after Second Live let me down, but in the few times I’ve played with it, it crashed twice after I closed the Lively tab in Firefox. There’s a lot more to learn and a lot for Google to add and improve upon, but it’s a nice start.

Try out Lively for yourself and let me know what you think or share things you’ve discovered that I haven’t found yet.