Updated Breaking News: Google Announces Lively; Rivers Run Red and Millions of Us Launch as Prefered Developers

Google has just announced Lively, a free, browser-based virtual environment with tight integration to MySpace, Facebook, OpenSocial, and Google gadgets like Picasa and Youtube. Unlike some previous integrations of virtual worlds and social networks, with Lively, users' friends lists, feeds, and logins are tied directly to the social network. That's not to say Lively is limited to Facebook, though. The virtual environments are embeddable on any Web page with a snippet of code that can then be viewed as a full 3D environment, based in part on Emergent's Gamebryo engine, after downloading a roughly 9 megabyte plugin.

"It’s been underway for three years, which is a little odd for Google, but the company wanted to be sure it entered the space in the right way," Mel Guymon, Head of 3D Operations, Google, told Virtual Worlds News this morning.

There's no monetization model on the table for Google, though there are plans down the road. Users can add objects (or content from sites like YouTube) from a vast library created by an internal team of 15 with experience from Warner Bros. and an international team of over 200 contractors, but there's no initial ability for most users to create their own 3D models or textures.

That may come as a surprise to many people who expected Google's long-rumored virtual worlds play to involve Google Earth or Sketchup, but there are official partnerships with other developers to create content, some of whom have already been working with Google for several quarters. Developers, ranging from dozens of amateurs culled from the ASU beta to professional agencies, must sign up for Google's whitelist, which the company plans to slowly grow.

Two of the first are Rivers Run Red and Millions of Us. Initially the two are approaching Lively as a new opportunity for branded immersive spaces, though Rivers Run Red noted that as more Google Gadgets and tools are added, Lively could become a promising component for its recently announced enterprise platform.

For now, Millions of Us is launching the first brand inside of Lively with National Geographic.

"The first one that’s launching is for the National Geographic Channel," said Millions of Us CEO Reuben Steiger. "It brings their successor to The Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Tuckers (LA Hard Hats). It’s an inside look at heavy duty construction and the people behind it, and we created an interactive environment around it."

As all have noted, the entrance of one of the biggest Web companies into the virtual worlds space could be a sign for the industry.  If nothing else, the competition is heating up.

"Our goal is to get everyone on the Web using 3D and to validate it as a part of the social experience," said Guymon. "If we [as an industry] are going to do it, I think getting someone like Google to do it is crucial. And since we are doing it, I think we’re going to look back at having had Google do it as crucial."

Currently, Lively only runs in IE and Firefox on Windows XP and Vista machines, though the company has said that a Mac OS X client is a priority for the future. Google limits Lively to users 13 and over.

UPDATE: I wanted to include this here for the list of features discussions. Lively is based on a "rooms" approach instead of a broad virtual world. The metaphor is that users create individual rooms, though those can already be as large as several virtual kilometers, and tie them together instead of creating islands or neighborhoods in an existing world.

The rooms themselves have a user cap of 20.

"We set an arbitrary 'visible avatar limit' at 20 rendered characters," said Guymon via email. "Most Windows machines you could buy in the last 2 years can handle this just fine.  We may up this limit based on how people use the product.  When more than this log into a room, they become 'observers'.  They don't interact with the room but can watch what's going on.  This is perfect for things like virtual concerts, interviews, etc" /UPDATE

I've just finished talking to Google, so check back soon for more information [Feature with more info from Guymon, Millions of Us, and others in the industry]. For now, here's the Lively trailer.

Comments

[WandringSoul]

Hmm, seems somewhat broken at the moment.

[Bobrick]

This is crap. SL was at least semi-realistic by default (even the furries look like actual fursuits worn by normally-proportioned humans).

This shit looks like Zwinky in 3-D. ICK

[SpecialK]

Yes, went the right way from a useability standpoint but wrong way on realism. Need better avatars (like the 3D scan ones from 28th article - [TC]2) not worse than 2nd life and better scene detail.------------------------------------

[Richard Trigaux]

I am sad, but not surprised, of the failure of Google Lively.

As a matter of facts, we must wonder why people remained in Second Life, expensive and buggy (295 dollars per month for a sim, it is by far the most expensive of the worlds) and did not switched to Lively, which claimed to offer them the same thing for free.

Few seem to understand that the success of Second Life comes from the fact it is offering in one place a full set of tools and fonctions: building, customized avatar, discussion, group tools, search and teleportation, etc. And above all, that it does this in a totally neutral and transparent way toward our opinions, philosophies, styles, tastes, etc, allowing everybody to live his second life as he likes, to realize his dream world. Lively offered only a part of the tools (youtube videos did not compensated for the lack) and above all its caricatural avatars were the dream of only their creator…

Facing the disastrous management and recurrent bugs of Second Life, I hoped that the powerful Google would propose a reliable and pleasant product, with a more reasonable price. At least they have the capacity to do so. After the deception when discovering Lively, I hoped again it was only a test, with in sight the preparation of something more serious. But no, seems that quite simply Google did not understood.

Pity.

Did they have in mind that people would come in Lively just to look at advertisings? (Second Life is just limiting them to only shops).