Every Thursday afternoon, the employees at JotSpot escape repetitive startup stress by parachuting into a dark, bloody world. There, these techno geeks become techno gladiators, splitting into two teams to crush their enemies. Or shoot each other in the crotch, the killer strategy of choice.

Company founder Joe Kraus grains as he watches the familiar bursts of animated rivalry in this regularly scheduled interstellar shoot-em-up. “People are pretty amazed when I tell them I take my entire engineering staff offline for 30 to 40 minutes to do this”, he said. But temporarily transforming his startup into a virtual arcade gives him an edge in the brutally competitive race to

recruit top talent and create the next big thing, he said.

Nowhere is game play taken more seriously than among corporate leaders who have discovered the bottom-line benefits of encouraging their employees to play at work.

What better way to boost morale while keeping twitchy employees glued to their screens? When it comes to team building, nothing could be more interactive.  And, studies show video games trigger the release of dopamine in the brain, a natural buzz that relieves stress. The gaming trend sweeping Silicon Valley is not confined to the corporate arena. In fact, compulsive gamers are popping up all over, even on clubby Sand Hill Road.
 
Consider Michael Kim and Alex Lloyd, business school pals whose venture capital firm has invested in two game companies in the past year. They race each other on dueling networked Xbox sets and plasma televisions

in Rustic Canyon Partners’ conference room in Red-wood City. Kim, 38, an avid gamer since he was a kid, often stays up late to engage in virtual mortal combat in Halo 2, an on-line shooter game. Few financiers can rival the gaming credibility of Tim Chang, a partner at Gabriel Venture Partners in Red-wood City, who has been a hardcore gamer since he was seven years old. “I am almost an addict,” said Chang, 33, who plays until one every morning. “I have probably played every major PC game release since 1996”.

Chang said he and other young venture capitalists are taking their inner geek out of the gaming closet now that game receipts have topped Hollywood box office, proving their potential investment value to Sand Hill Road.
“Now only can you show your inner geek, you are expected to show your inner seek”, said serial entrepreneur James Currier.
 
Currier is so enthralled with the evolution of online multiplayer games better known as “metaverses” (for “metaphysical universe”) that he joined the board of Linden Lab, where avatars (online versions of yourself) live and work, even create games within the game.
So, venture capitalists are donning bowling shoes and toting backpacks to prove they can keep up with the geekiest, Currier said. “You are required to understand and participate in this world to be a part of the digital media tribe”, he said. 

As more people discover these parallel online universes where social networking and gaming intersect, that tribe will expand at an exponential rate, Currier predicts. Already, these worlds have converged for some. Take Internet guru and venture capitalist Joichi Ito. He not only plays World of Warcraft, he takes business connections and learns leadership skills there. Within the game that has more than six million subscribers, each paying up to $15 a month to
explore its fantastic realms, Ito runs We Know, a 300-person group, called a guild in the game’s parlance, that collaborates on military raids and other group strategies. His guild has become so popular that Napster founder Shawn Fanning is joining up. In fact, team members develop such strong bonds and skills in the virtual world that many end up hirer in the real world. They also talk about real-life business challenges while playing the game.
“You really get to see the character of the people you are working with”, Ito said. “I am starting to hire people I play video games with, or I am trying to work with them”. Silicon Valley is at the epicentre of this growing constellation of gaming worlds that are transforming how people interact at every level, said Douglas Thomas. An associate professor at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Editor of Games and Culture, he takes part in a World of Warcraft guild of  academic researchers.   “There is a quote from Plato that you learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a lifetime of conversation. And there really is something to that”, said Thomas. “You see people at their best and at their worst. You get to see how they deal with adversity. You work as a group to overcome incredible challenges. You forge very powerful connections very quickly by overcoming obstacles”.