The Virtual End?

I'll be updating this post over the next few days. An article in today's New York Times reports that Google is shutting down its virtual endeavors - the avatar world known as "Lively" - concluding that it really was not worth all the effort and investment. See:

NY Times, Sunday Nov. 23: "Google Unplugs Lively as Hype Fades Over Virtual Worlds"

also, an interesting blog about the reality behind that avatar crowd:

Second Life Herald: "How Many Bots in the World Are There? Half the Green Dots are Bots"




DECEMBER 6, 2008

Okay, so those couple of days turned into a couple of weeks. Nevertheless, I don't like to leave a job unfinished, and so I return to this post to report on my findings.

Apparently, Google, inc. dipped their rainbow toes into the virtual waters earlier this year to test the general public's reactions (and just possibly to generate a profit). They must have felt some sort of competitive presence from Linden labs and other established operators of the virtual community (e.g. World of Warcraft). "Lively," which is the name of the program launched by Google, was implemented as an experiment from the beginning. So really, the folks at Google were not making any promises. They were just checking things out.

And, it seems, things did not look all that good. They did not attract the millions of visitors and users of Second Life, nor did their setup (as far as server capabilities) support the intricate graphics and extensive spaces that people look for in a virtual experience. Several blog posts accompanying the NY Times article reflect this. They report "Lively" as being little more than an animated chat room, poorly publicized, and less than entertaining to those who seek out such things. So Google opted out, stating that they were more interested in focusing on what they do best; that is, providing a top-notch search engine. This was probably a good move, in light of the recent troubles at Yahoo! and all the implications of spreading one's corporate talent too thin. It is better (and more economically sound) to excel in a single area than be mediocre in many. That is the philosophy adopted by the Googleites. They felt that the time, resources, and talent it would take to expand "Lively" into a more competitive entity could be better spent elsewhere.

One line in this article really caught my attention. The mention of Reuters opening a news bureau within Second Life in 2006 - and abandoning the effort earlier this year, in November - was intriguing. I decided to do a little research on this, to see just what happened.

In 2006, Second Life was at the height of its pulic trendsetting. It was still fairly new and innovative, and everyone wanted in. So the Reuters news bureau arranged, whether as a gimmick or an experiment or as a legitimate operation, to have one of their reporters stationed within the virtual world full-time, as an avatar, to do his reporting from within Second Life. His stories, which are archived on the Reuters web site (see http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/author/eric/) ranged in subject from political campaigns and voter opinion polls (within SL) to corporate publicity efforts inside the virtual world. He discussed the Second Life economy, Linden Labs executives, and tidbits of interest from other virtual worlds. But, in the end, there was not all that much to present as news. Reuters reporter Eric Krangel, whose avatar name was Eric Reuters, stated in a final post from the SL Reuters news station that "The very things that most appeal to Second Life's hardcore enthusiasts are either boring or creepy for most people: Spending hundreds of hours of effort to make insignificant amounts of money selling virtual clothes, experimenting with changing your gender or species, getting into random conversations with strangers from around the world, or having pseudo-nonymous sex..."(Krangel). He mentions several ways in which Second Life can be improved; one of these that I found particularly insightful was that SL should stop "posing" as a legitimate and practical place to conduct business. He indicates several problems, such as overloaded servers that crashed frequently, a "mess" of a user interface, and malfunctioning teleport and instant message features. He grappled with these and other difficulties on a daily basis while trying to complete his assignments, and came to the sound conclusion that "Second Life is tolerable as a playground, but enterprise users will never and should never use it for business" (Krangel). I agree with him on this - in the few short weeks that I spent exploring the virtual world, I found little more than an abundance of scantily clad avatars generating obscene noises and gestures in crowded dance halls, while most other locations were deserted. Conversations were easily interrupted by anyone in the vicinity. Meetings were complicated by slow server response times and even crashes. Without a top-notch graphics card, the "world" was painfully slow to load and display its fantastic landscapes. It just did not function well enough to be useful.

I've been thinking all along that this stuff is better left alone as a 21st-century form of entertainment. From the comments I've read, many think virtual worlds will survive and even prosper throughout the current recession, as people seek escape routes from their everyday troubles. But from the corporate perspective, the hype is truly over. Virtual worlds are destined to disclose their real purposes, for profit or loss, entertainment or education, burlesque or business - the next few years will decide.

Works Cited:
Krangel, Eric. "Exclusive: Why Reuters Left Second Life, and How Linden Labs Can Fix It." Silicon Alley Insider Digital Business: 21 November, 2008. .