Google shut down virtual world at years end
The internet giant, Google, is going to shut down their five month old virtual world, Lively, at years end. Google going to shut down Lively because Lively doesn’t have as much players that Google had expected, which is only ten thousand player each week which is not a very high number for a corporate giant such as Google.
The cause of the low influx of players is due to the lack of user interface in the virtual world. While Google has successfully created a virtual world that are easy to use, but even though Google have many applications such as Google Map, Google World, etc, Google doesn’t implant their application into Lively user interface which make this virtual world very boring. Another problem of the virtual world , Lively, is the lack of the opportunity of advertising and there is no currency whatsoever in the virtual world.
Although Google has already state that they are going to shut down Lively, in reality shutting down a virtual world is never an easy task, even when the virtual world is only five month old, this is mainly because the player that already play this virtual world already adopt a sense of ownership and belonging in the virtual world. In five month time, there’s no surprise if the players have already formed guilds or group of people that they always hang around with. So in the end Google is now stuck on a rut.
