First things first. I’ve never been too hot for second life. I found the virtual aspect of the whole thing a bit too unnerving for my taste. However I have enjoyed SimCity – but more the building and organizing part than actually hoping for some interaction from the elements within the world. So, when I read about Google Lively I didn’t jump into it right away. I watched the video on its blog and decided to take a whirl, just to see what it was like. And what I saw wasn’t very pretty.
First of all the graphics is pretty lame, and it looks very amateurish to say the least. The user interface was not very easy to use and the motions didn’t work very well either. For example, as I was furnishing my room, I tried to move the couch and the rug came with it. Then I had to move the whole thing back. The selections for both furnishing the room and dressing the avatar is inadequately thin. Both a turn off in my estimation.
Then finally, when I went to save the whole thing, it said I had to get a shell. By this time, I thought I had done that to start the whole project. After spending all that time and not having a very good experience, I just decided to can the project. I’ll wait until the service improves.
So, my advice is, don’t bother until they’ve improved everything!
Read the NY Times take on this if you’re like to learn more.