Electronics Arts is investing in online gaming, but Chief Executive Larry Probst said on Monday not to expect the world’s biggest video game publisher to emulate Second Life’s virtual world.

“Second Life is a pretty adult product with some unusual adult content. We are not going to go there,” Probst said at an investor conference in San Francisco on Monday.

Play on Second Life, from San Francisco’s Linden Lab, has a lot in common with “The Sims,” one of EA’s best-selling game franchises. Players in both virtual worlds build characters, known as avatars, who own virtual property, erect homes and conduct online lives.

That’s about where the similarities end.

While scrappy Sims players can build, share and apply homemade nude “skins” to characters and have them rub together like kids play with Barbie and Ken, Second Life players don’t stop at heavy petting.

Second Life, which is open to the 18 and older crowd, boasts red-light sections and gives players free rein to endow avatars with a cornucopia of private parts and to have them engage in adult activities that would make the traditional video game industry’s rating agency apoplectic.

Update: How crazy does it really get in Second Life. Click here for a dispatch from Reuters’ bureau in SL.  

Second Life Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22451128@N00/411725442