Google Lively

Google Lively was a virtual world that existed for about half a year in 2008. At the time it was active, I was 10 years old. Anyone with a Google account could log in from a web broswer, create an avatar, then join public rooms. I distinctly remember there was a coffee shop and an underwater lounge, and you could design your own personal apartment, complete with your own furniture, decorations, and layout. You could then invite your friends to your virtual apartment and hang out. When you joined a room, your avatar would be placed in the center, and you could move it around and type messages that would appear as speech bubbles over your character. I remember you could make your character do certain actions that convey emotions, from positive actions like shaking hands, laughing, and clapping, to negative actions like crying. For some reason, I seem to recall it was possible to punch objects or perhaps even other avatars, if you so desired.

Screenshot of the Google Lively interface

It was an exquisite playground. I would spend hours decorating my room, sitting in the lounges and coffee shops, meeting other users, and interacting with them virtually. I even remember there were secret hideouts within some of the rooms—in particular the underwater lounge—that you could access if you double clicked your mouse at just the right place. Finding those hideouts and then showing other people how to access them was so thrilling. My dad was aware of the website, and he gave me permission to play around on it. In hindsight, it was probably not a good idea for me to have unsupervised access to the website, as it involved meeting and interacting with strangers—actual people hidden behind an avatar and a screen name. I don't think my dad fully understood the social aspect of the website, or else I definitely feel like he wouldn't have let me spend so much time on it. He explained to me that he thought it was a good thing for me to experience and interact with what was the cutting edge of Internet technology at the time. A fully navigable, customizable, and interactive virtual world that runs entirely from your web browser? At the time, that was mind-blowing. Fortunately, although I definitely remember encountering trolls that would abuse some of the interactive functionalities like punching other avatars, the wide majority of people I encountered were friendly.

Yumi, Aelita, Odd, and Ulrich from Code Lyoko

I was particularly drawn to the concept of a virtual world because of my interest in the show Code Lyoko, a French cartoon whose English dub had regularly scheduled airings on Cartoon Network. I've talked about Code Lyoko on this blog before, and I think the show was integral to my formative years. It was one of my favorite TV shows. The show revolved around a group of kids named Jeremy, Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich, who must frequently travel to a virtual world called Lyoko in order to defeat a computer virus named XANA and attempt to materialize a girl named Aelita, who has been trapped inside of the world, back into the real world. The original show ran for four seasons, and actually just a few weeks ago, it was re-added to the Netflix catalog in the US. (I remember the show being on Netflix way back in sixth or seventh grade, when Netflix instant streaming was still a nascent side-concept to their DVD service, but it was removed relatively quickly.) Every time I fired up Google Lively, it was just like I was Jeremy, Odd, Yumi, Ulirch, or Aelita, transporting myself to a virtual world. Code Lyoko was unique in that it combined traditional 2D animation with computer animation: scenes set in the real world were drawn in traditional animation, whereas scenes set in Lyoko were animated with computer-generated imagery (CGI). So too were the avatars and virtual environments of Google Lively animated with CGI, and it made the experience all the more Lyoko-like for 10-year-old Michael Zeng.

The idea of Google Lively, as I recall, was an experiment in a new kind of social networking. Although it felt very much like a video game, I don't think that was the exact goal. Rather than posting text posts and customizing your Facebook Wall, you could instead use Google Lively to customize your virtual apartment room and meet your friends in real-time as interactive avatars. The goal was to create a new way for people to communicate over the Internet. Just like texting, calling, or videoconferencing, the fundamental idea was to bring people together.

Today, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it extraordinarily difficult for friends to spend time together via traditional means. Yes, we can always text, call, or videoconference, but the range of activities that we can accomplish via these means is limited. It has been nearly 12 years since Google shut down its Lively project, but as I sit here holed up at home like everyone else, I can't help but yearn once again for the world of Lively: where friends could meet up and chat at a virtual coffee shop, or chill out at each other's virtual apartments, or virtually high-five while laughing at each other's jokes, or even virtually cry and sit together in silence when we are feeling down. There was something a little magical in the world of Lively that I can't help but feel nostalgic for every now and then. It was a world of exploration, of secret hideouts, of new technologies, of friendly people, of exciting possibilities. It was an area of the Internet that tried with all of its heart to bring us closer together in a very human way, and for a brief moment between July 2008 and December 2008, I like to think that it worked.