After confirming that Google intends to open its virtual world Lively to games developers, creative director Kevin Hanna says the aim is for the service to eventually become an games platform.

Earlier this year, at the Game Developers Conference, Hanna revealed that an API would be released, allowing users to create simple arcade or games. "There is a longer term goal of opening up the API so the architecture of Lively could be used as an online games platform," Hanna explained.

The ex-Microsoft employee, now working at the Emmy award-winning X-Ray Kid, hopes that Lively can be an inspiration as well as an entry point for developers who can easily get to grips with the Google technology.

"I hope that this inspires those same 'passionate start-ups' and kids in college to actually go and produce games where they don't have to worry about the visual bar or the accessibility, because those things are already pre-established," he told GI.biz.

We'll bring you more on this soon.

By James Wallis