When Hollywood stars need to get something done, they pick up a cell phone and call their agent. After all, creative talent doesn't necessarily equal business sense, and there's nothing like having a shrieking shark with a law degree on your side. Agents make sure that their big-money clients are taken care of, and that they receive the most lucrative contracts negotiable form studios that can't afford not to have their clients' services.

It may be time for game creators to start thinking along the same lines. Talent is at a premium in the PC gaming industry, and as talented amateur developers start to appear with greater frequency, a system should be in place to provide them with the very best opportunities for success.

Its all part of an inevitable maturation process for our industry. It used to be that you finagled an entry-level tester job at a game company, then gutted your way up the ladder through the ranks of assistant producer, producer, and eventually project lead. It was a time-honored apprentice system that taught incremental skills to craftsmen. But in recent years, the user-friendliness of development tools (and the proliferation of Internet and instant-message networking) has led to a new kind of game creator: unpaid amateurs working either alone or in informal cells, but with the skill, depth, and precision of classically assembled development teams.

There's no longer any time-or need-for a company to spend years to develop project leads out of testers. What's needed now is an effective way for publishers and large development houses to locate and identify amateur developers with the potential to be big players…or better yet, to find crews that are ready to get the job done right now.

Currently, there's no easy way to find them. The major mod communities are little more than links to every mod-, map-, and skin-maker on the web. You could literally spend all day in a full-time job just checking all this stuff out, and for every interesting lead, you'd have to wade through several dozen unprofessional efforts.

That's why the time is right for a game creator's super-agency.

This organization would open doors to public submissions, and would have a small staff of dedicated people to sift through all the web links and CDs. The small percentage of submissions that show merit-the diamonds in the rough-would then be contacted and their product researched. If the creators have the goods, the agency would sign them on as clients. (Just as with Hollywood agencies, there'd be no fee for signing on as a client-your agent would make his 15% percent when he sold your team's services.)

Such a service would be a boon to game companies, which would have a centralized pre-screening system in place to weed out the wannabes. Its actually an obvious symbiosis: game companies get a pool of hot young talent, and the hot young talent gets a connected insider to shepherd them to the promised land of a development deal. There are tons of exciting prospects out there, but they have no connections and no way of getting noticed. The agency would be their door-opener.

Publishers have already displayed their eagerness to get involved with such talent. Several high-profile development teams, such as CroTeam and ReWolf Studios, have inked distribution deals for their first efforts, and are currently fielding new development offers. There isn't a publisher in the world that wouldn't love to be in business with an outfit like the FireArms Team, which produced the sublime FireArms mod for Half-Life. They'll probably end up paying slightly more for such teams with the intervention of an agent, but I think many executive producers would be happy to pay the mark-up if it helped guarantee them access to worthy new talent.

To be fair, this idea has been attempted before, and didn't result in much. Ben Jones, the current director for strategic partnerships at WEB Corp (which actively seeks out new development teams for its browser-based development slate), launched such an interactive talent agency, but eventually abandoned the idea. "There was just no profit," he says. "The contract in this industry tends to be so low to begin with that no one can really justify an agent's share."

But I'd suggest that this situation may be changing. A successful game with huge online and franchise appeal can be a gold mine for publishers, and never more so than when it comes from the background of web-connected developers who toil with the support of eager online fans-in-waiting. By nurturing the very best of these concepts, smart publishers can make great strides toward ensuring a big reception for the finished product. If a title breaks out into a franchise success with multiple online spin-offs à la Half-Life, then the higher pay-days for new talent would be justified. (What better way for a fledgling brand manager to grow a brand than to pluck one, fully formed, off the mod-community vine?) By dealing with the agency, publishers would have the very best of the web's prospects to choose from.

What's important is that talented amateur creators get access to their dreams, and protection when it comes time to sign on the dotted line. A centralized talent agency for these folks would be an indispensable step in the growth of the industry's talent pool. Someone should get started on this right away-I want 15-year-old gaming stars reaching for their cell phones.