The new executives: doing business over Xbox Live

Zach Shiff-Abrams, an executive of Michael De Luca Prods., has an observation: “Is it really socially acceptable to talk business at 2 a.m. on the phone? Of course not. But it’s completely acceptable on Xbox Live.”

And apparently, it’s one of the fastest growing forms of “socialization”, particularly among the young executives. It does make a lot of sense, actually. This generation of young professionals are the first witnesses to the boom of the gaming industry. Of course they’d know and appreciate online play, even finding a way to make it suitable to their current, more “mature” lifestyle.

But doing business over Xbox Live? That’s interesting.

Business life on Xbox Live after the jump!

Zach Shiff-Abrams, an executive of Michael De Luca Prods., has an observation: “Is it really socially acceptable to talk business at 2 a.m. on the phone? Of course not. But it’s completely acceptable on Xbox Live.”

And apparently, it’s one of the fastest growing forms of “socialization”, particularly among the young executives. It does make a lot of sense, actually. This generation of young professionals are the first witnesses to the boom of the gaming industry. Of course they’d know and appreciate online play, even finding a way to make it suitable to their current, more “mature” lifestyle.

But doing business over Xbox Live? That’s interesting.

Ben Fritz, another Hollywood gamer-exec, writes about this growing new trend in socialization online. While the trend is nothing new, what makes this scenario fresh is the fact that the socialization happens online, within a game, and among professionals who probably would not have had the same opportunity to seal a deal had they met up for some formal dinner meeting in a fancy restaurant.

Take the Gears of War movie, for example. Fritz narrates that New Line Cinema‘s studio exec, Jeff Katz, was an avid player of the game. It was on Xbox Live that he actualized his idea of writing the game into a movie. Sending a voice message to Stuart Beattie via Microsoft‘s online service provider, he asked, “If we bought the game that you and I were playing, would you want to write it?” More than a year later, Beattie is now writing the film adaptation for the movie, and in fact confesses that he talks to Katz more on XBL than in person or over the phone.

Some of them even finds that the XBL is a good “research” tool in terms of finding out more about the current psyche of different age groups. After all, one only needs to enter into random play and you’ll already be immersed in a “room” full of various characters and personalities. So you wanna know how kids today swear? Join in on a random play match and get yourself attacked by middle-schoolers with “modern” profanities for being the weakest link in the team. That’s as real an observation as you can get.

Anyhow, the magic of online play is indeed proving to be more than just fun, but also practical. With this, there’s proof that you can definitely mix pleasure with business.