The death of Lively and some lessons about complexity

by Tateru Nino Jan 2nd 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Game mechanics, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds, Lively

Google's Lively presents us with an interesting scenario. It was literally a checklist of what critics have been saying that virtual environments such as Linden Lab's Second Life absolutely must have in order to make it.

A simplified user-interface, embedded in the Web-browser, content designed by professionals rather than (mostly) amateurs, a 'room' (or contained space) model rather than a widespread world. While it was touted as having no requirement for a separate downloadable client, that wasn't actually true -- it did actually have one, though it was relatively painless to download and install.

In short, it was the perceived holy grail of virtual environment 'must-haves' for success, as so frequently touted in media articles which lauded its simplicity and accessibility. Also, in short, Lively was a failure -- a spectacular one. Spectacular, but not without educational value.

Backed up by the technological expertise and budgets of Google Inc, bolstered by the press who named it the virtual world that would cast Second Life aside, Lively sank like a stone. Lively didn't even last six months from open beta to closure.

It's closest competitor, IMVU launched public beta in 2004, and broached more than 20 million registered users earlier this year, with approximately 600,000 of those active each month (though like most virtual environments, it isn't really very clear quite what 'active' means -- so active users isn't really a useful statistic for any comparisons).

Lively, for all its promise appears to be the shortest-lived entry thus far in launched commercial virtual environments.

If you dumb something down far enough, very few people will actually want to use it. We're not ragging on Lively here. Instead, we're aiming to learn from its principles and performance. Let's introduce a new principle called necessary complexity.

The idea here is that any interactive system has a certain amount of complexity, usually involving the number and type of tasks which can be performed. Obviously, it is detrimental if the interaction interface is more complicated than it needs to be. That just makes things harder.

What's a little less obvious is that reducing the complexity of the interaction interface too far makes things harder as well. Either it makes it hard to perform the tasks, or it reduces the number of tasks which can be performed.

Reduce the tasks and features of a virtual environment far enough, and you have Flickr -- it's alright, Flickr, we still love you - and so do more than a million other users.

In interacting with the atomic world, you have available one of the most sophisticated interaction interfaces available. It has between 60 trillion and 100 trillion basic components, and over a quadrillion discrete mechanical parts. It's called the human body. It allows you to make coffee, paint a picture, have sex, walk, run, sit, read, write, communicate by voice, dance, sing, fill out insurance forms, build or repair machines or buildings, and more -- though not every one of these options is available in every single model.

Imagine trying to perform some of the same tasks if your interaction interface was limited to a two-button mouse. Or just imagine being Stephen Hawking trying to build a shed or brew a cup of coffee, if that helps. The number of steps he has to perform even to ask someone else to do it for him is enormous, because his interaction interface is so limited.

So, ideally the interaction interface needs to be of an order of complexity that is coupled to the order of complexity of the number and type of possible tasks. If it rises above that or falls below that, performing tasks becomes harder. Performing tasks with an oversimplified interaction-interface is like trying to make coffee with one hand tied behind your back. Overcomplicating it, is like trying to instruct five people to build a shed, when none of you have any language in common. Both tasks can be done, but you'd rather that the circumstances weren't nearly so hard. (In both cases, you will note, we use the prefix over- to indicate 'in an excessive manner', just in case you were in any doubt)

MMOGs learned this lesson, albeit it took a long time and was rather halting and painful. The interaction interface is a good match for the hardware (mouse plus keyboard), and for the number and type of tasks and options available to the user. If you've wondered why most of those interfaces resemble World of Warcraft to some degree, it's less a matter of ripping off Blizzard's UI, and more about the recognition of the utility of the interface.

Non-game virtual-environments, however, have yet to strike that balance between the complexity of the interaction interface and the tasks and options that the interface must enable and provide access to.

We are hopeful that the situation will improve over the next few years, but we certainly expect virtual environment interfaces to swing wildly between overcomplex and oversimplified. With so many options available in popular non-game virtual environments, we're not expecting it to be easy to strike the right balance. After all, if it were, someone already would have done so -- and that hasn't happened yet.

Tags: featured, flickr, game-mechanics, google, imvu, lively, opinion, second-life, virtual-worlds, world-of-warcraft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Scarecrowe said on 3:38PM 1-02-2009

I had never even heard of Lively until this article.

jonathan said on 9:31AM 1-03-2009

me too, my friends, my girlfriend and her friends either.

I think that was a marketing problem.

Malixu said on 4:02PM 1-02-2009

"If you've wondered why most of those interfaces resemble World of Warcraft to some degree, it's less a matter of ripping off Blizzard's UI, and more about the recognition of the utility of the interface."

Oh how short people's memories are. There were plenty of MMOs with a similar interface long before WoW came out. In turn, it appears to have inherited things such as emotes and similar commands from MUDs, frankly.

Beyond that little rant, I absolutely agree with the article. Virtual Worlds try far too hard to be easy, and in doing so make everything but the most simple operations overcomplicated. LSL (Second Life's scripting language) is currently making me want to hunt down Lindens with a blunt spoon, because everything it does well, has been done, and everything interesting is unspeakably overcomplicated in it.

Angel said on 6:31PM 1-02-2009

I totally agree with both your statements... I was going to cry "RetCon WoW yet again?!". Often I find it irritating... it's kind of like saying a horse drawn wagon could never have existed without the the wagon.

I have made this very same observation and have begun exploring the idea of "necessary complexity" and "entertaining high complexity" in UI and game development, especially in relationship to character progression and the concept of classes. i am coming to the comclusion "classes" are to simplistic in copmparison tothe actual desire of many MMORPG players.

Tateru Nino said on 12:35AM 1-03-2009

Oh, almost every element of the WoW interface had its antecedents. There's nothing new under the sun there as far as individual elements is concerned. What it does do, in aggregate, is strike almost exactly the right balance between user, hardware interfaces, tasks and game-systems.

A successful formula, rather than just an arbitrary combination of successful ingredients.

lethality said on 4:51PM 1-02-2009

Once again, Massively allows articles that are VASTLY out of touch with their audience.

This article's author seems to over-cover Second Life her at Massively, ad-nauseum. Without fail there is at least one article per day on the topic, at least.

So now, at least it's not Second Life... so what does the author do? He injects his personal opinion into the fact that "see, Second Life IS the best and Lively failing proves it!" He sounds just like an over-zealous EQ1 player who just won't let go of the fact that other games are doing it better.

I ask the Massively editors to please review this author and adjust his editorial works and access accordingly.

torin said on 5:53PM 1-02-2009

lethality, go crawl back under your rock. Tateru hasn't posted anything since the 27th of December, and rarely before then which is a shame because I enjoy her cogent discussions of the workings of Second Life. I look daily on Massively to see what news there is from Second Life.

And even if *SHE*(you might want to put some thought or at least some basic googling into your pronoun choices- or heck- I don't know- look at the accompanying picture) DID post something every day, you see those little links on the side? You can tailor Massively to just look at what games you are interested in. So don't muddy up the comments with your pointless bitchin' just 'cause you don't 'get' Second Life. There are plenty here who do and who aren't looking to you to be the decider of Massively content.

You've done this before on Tateru's posts, and a quick look at your comment history shows drive-by hyperbolic criticism lacking any real analysis is basically your MO. (just within six days you've posted only shallow bitchy comments about Tateru, Mark Jacobs, Penny Arcade, Warhammer Online, Mythic and ... bizarrely.... the US patent system). You have nothing constructive or even remotely cogent to offer apparently.

Take it elsewhere, or learn some manners.

lethality said on 1:52PM 1-03-2009

Go ahead. Prove to me I'm wrong. Prove to me that this is non-biased journalism. People coming here for news want news... not bias.

lethality said on 4:53PM 1-02-2009

And just to add, Lively was never commercial. You can't call it a commercial failure. It was an experiment, like many of Googles efforts.

Tateru Nino said on 12:38AM 1-03-2009

Here we are referring to 'commercial' as 'produced by a commercial enterprise and that launched' as opposed to those virtual environments that were not produced by commercial enterprises or that didn't actually make it to launch.

Alicia Stella said on 6:44PM 1-02-2009

I enjoy reading any articles on Massively that relate to Second Life. I do not understand why some people are against the idea of stories about SL. If you don't like SL related articles don't read anything with the tag "Second Life" on here.

Thanks Tateru and Massively for continuing to report on SL. I always find it enlightening.

Kraft said on 5:53AM 1-03-2009

jthillik said on 6:42AM 1-03-2009

"Let's introduce a new principle called necessary complexity."

This has been well known to software engineers since 1986. See the "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering" paper.

Tateru Nino said on 6:45AM 1-03-2009

Oh, we're well acquainted with it here (I used to teach it myself 20 years ago as a part of user-interface design), but it is new to many of our readers.

Shawn said on 8:38AM 1-03-2009

Larry Wall got it right : simple things should be easy to do, complex things should be possible.

UltimateQ said on 10:49AM 1-03-2009

I never really cared for it. I tried it, all you did was walk around and talk.

There may of been emotes. I don't know, I didn't get that far.

Eric Rice said on 5:38PM 1-03-2009

The core of the issue is public spaces with emphasis on interaction vs. public spaces with emphasis on gameplay (where social interaction is secondary).

This is one of the biggest challenges any worlds/chat maker has to overcome, then again, where have we seen wild success with open, social places (like chat), that could exist without excessive moderation and control by some entity?

I've found it hilarious how Sony's Playstation Home is criticized because of a) nothing to do and b) the quality of the user (read: dance raping) in one camp, and the other camp criticizes for lack of user-creation tools.

If you use Twitter, Facebook, post to blogs as an author or a commenter, you ARE doing the same thing that is done in virtual worlds-- there's just slight differences in UI.

Lively was an IMVU-esque 20% project within Google and isn't where Google's virtual world efforts will come from. Google can build, not *a*, but *the* virtual world, and the metaverse is just a layer on top of that we can modify and adapt on top of the engine.

The game industry will catch up-- that's my prediciton-- and they'll make good virtual spaces WITHIN a context that most people won't have a stigma over. Sitting in an inn or my safehouse garage in a racing game, is a wide-open opportunity to socialize, save, customize, *if I choose to do it*.

It's an option.

steve said on 5:43PM 1-03-2009

well torin i already put lethality on ignore for his choice of words.

the only thing that came through was

(lethality said...

Go ahead. Prove to me I'm wrong. Prove to me that this is non-biased journalism. People coming here for news want news... not bias.)

to bad because he seems like a person who could be a great speaker if he wanted to be /shrug

ardra said on 2:36PM 1-05-2009

Second Life features the most spectacular avatars in any online video game. Lively featured by far the worst. Second Life has its share of crudely built objects, but also has some awesome ones made by professional game designers who use it as a free 'sandbox' to practice their craft, and also, by quite a few talented nobodies who just enjoy the freedom to build anything their heart desires. There may never be another game like Second Life, nor any game as free and unrestricted.

Tony said on 3:40PM 1-05-2009

I don't think that "necessary complexity" needs to be there from the beginning for all users.

Why can't the increased complexity be hidden, but available with an "advanced" button.

Better yet, a scalable complex interface that allows the user to customize the complexity beyond the simple interface if and when they choose.

I think the reason is that there hasn't been enough time yet. It takes too long to build a single interface into such a complicated thing as virtual worlds.

Had Google given it more time to develop, maybe they would have gotten there. I think however, they will choose to let others slog through the development swamp and they'll just buy who ever makes it through.