最近，虚拟世界游戏Second Life的开发公司Linden Lab聘请了Rod Humble作为公司的新任首席执行官。

据游戏邦了解，Rod Humble拥有近20年的丰富游戏开发经验，并参与过200多款游戏的开发制作。此前，他在老牌视频游戏公司Electronic Arts中担任EA Play品牌副总裁，同时负责经营Sims。在其期间，Humble监管数百款畅销电脑游戏特许经营。在加入EA公司之前，他曾任索尼网络娱乐有限公司的产品开发副总裁。

rod-humble

即日起，Rod Humble将替代Second Life的创作者Philip Rosedale担任Linden Lab公司的首席执行官。Philip Rosedale也是在今年6月Mark Kingdon辞职后才担任Linden Lab CEO一职。同年10月，Philip Rosedale宣布辞退后，Linden Lab公司的CEO一职一直悬而未决。今年6月，据称Second Life款游戏的用户数和交易量在本年首个季度有所提升，然而与此同时，Linden Lab却辞退了公司30%的员工，并解散了一个企业团队。

对于Humble的上任，Philip Rosedale表示十分看好Linden Lab的这位新领导。他认为“随着Second Life的规模逐渐发展壮，虚拟经济的发展与“居民”的认清息息相关。未来Second Life还有很长的路要走，相信该款游戏将会有更多更好的发展机会。”对此，Humble也表示自己一直以来都对这一领域十分感兴趣。

据游戏邦了解，在虚拟世界Second Life中，玩家可以任意创造各种事物，譬如玩家可以自己设计虚拟鞋子，并将其销售给其他游戏“居民”（玩家）。现在，虚拟世界Second Life的城市规模已经发展到足有两个香港的大小。然而，在虚拟世界蓬勃发现的同时，Second Life同样面临着来自Facebook等社交网站游戏的挑战。Linden Lab公司正竭尽全力提高游戏玩家的参与积极性。

Linden Lab公司在1999年由Rosedale创建了，据悉该公司的年收入约为7500万美元，旗下拥有员工220名。今年第三季度，Linden Lab公布Second Life中的75万“居民”总计在游戏中消耗1亿500万小时，这一数据相当于为1亿5000万的Linden dollars。由此可见，Second Life的业绩高于一般的虚拟世界游戏。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Linden Lab，creator of the Second Life virtual world, has hired Rod Humble as its new chief executive.

Humble is a veteran of Electronic Arts, where he served as executive vice president for the EA Play label and ran The Sims business. He’s got an impressive background in games, but Second Life has a lot of problems to overcome.

The company is fighting to hang on to its users for its deep and engaging virtual world, where users can explore a huge user-created virtual society, at a time when many users are turning to casual games on Facebook and other social networks.

Second Life’s appeal is that it allows users to create just about anything in the virtual world. They can, for instance, design virtual shoes and sell them to other users, known as Residents. The users can cash out the revenue as well, allowing Second Life to build a bridge from the virtual economy to the real economy. The virtual land mass of Second Life is so big now that it would be twice the size of Hong Kong in the real world.

Humble replaces Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life, who took the CEO position on an interim basis after Mark Kingdon resigned in June. Rosedale gave up the CEO position in October, leaving San Francisco-based Linden Lab without a CEO for a time. Second Life had reported user and transaction growth in the first quarter, but it cut 30 percent of its staff and eliminated an enterprise team in June.

Humble has spent more than 20 years in game development and worked on more than 200 games. Most recently as the head of the EA Play Label, he supervised the best-selling PC game franchise of all time, The Sims. Before joining EA, he was vice president of product development at Sony Online Entertainment.

“Rod is a great new leader for Linden Lab,” said Rosedale, in a statement. “Second Life has become a consistently large and profitable business with a thriving virtual economy built together with its passionate Resident community.  This has always been a big, long-term vision, it is still early and there is enormous opportunity for growth.”

In a statement, Humble (pictured) said, “I have a long-standing interest in the how the boundaries of society and economics change as communications evolve in new ways. Second Life is unique: it sits at the intersection of virtual worlds, avatars, and human contact.”

Rosedale founded Linden Lab in 1999. The company says its revenues exceed $75 million and it has been profitable, excluding restructuring and non-cash stock compensation expenses for each of the last three years. It has 220 employees. In the third quarter, the company said 750,000 residents spent more than 105 million hours within Second Life and exchanged $150 million worth of Linden dollars in the economy.

Based on those numbers, Second Life is doing better than a lot of virtual worlds. Rivals that have shut down include Vivaty, There.com, and Metaplace. （Source：VentureBeat）