Last year, former EA clever-clogs Rod “The Sims” Humble was made King of Second Life, a move which we discussed here. This week he told GamesIndustry that he was as surprised as anyone else about how big it still is: “To be honest, it had fallen off my radar until I got the call offering me the position. And I looked at their numbers: this is a world that has got 1 million people logging in every month, generating well in excess of $75 million a year – it’s extremely profitable – and it was the kind of company and the kind of product that I had been thinking about going away and working on anyway, on my own. It was kind of a perfect fit.” He went on to say that since he took the controls the user-built world has been growing again: “We managed to grow the new users significantly: they bumped up by well in excess of 40 per cent, and over the holiday period we had over 20,000 new people sign up a day. Now, that’s not Facebook numbers, but 20,000 a day…. that’s a lot, right?”

Seems like a lot, yes. Humble says his plans are to add “artificial life” to the world. So that sounds promising.