Talent agents have been trying to make inroads into the video game industry for more than a decade, succeeding with helping industry giants like Electronic Arts navigate Hollywood. But in a booming business, why would most big-shot developers -- or even small-shot ones -- need help finding jobs, and why would publishers, burning through talent, want a bunch of agents around to slow them down? Fewer people are asking these questions now, with upstart video game agencies like Digital Development Management growing rapidly. Indeed, with the $46 billion worldwide video game market in upheaval -- budgets are soaring for console titles even as free online games sharply cannibalize sales -- agents are suddenly awfully useful: finding the right talent to complete increasingly complex titles, structuring deals across media, bringing in third-party financiers 'Agents, after trying for a long time, have become crucial to this particular entertainment genre,' said Elizabeth M. Daley, the dean of the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, whose video game design program was recently named No. 1 in the United States by Princeton Review. Video game agents come in two distinct varieties. On one side are broad Hollywood agencies that extrapolate their movie and television approach to the pinnacle of the video-game business. United Talent spends most of its time working with prominent game writers like Susan O'Connor ('BioShock,' 'Gears of War') and the top echelon of publishers. Ditto Creative Artists, although it is also trying to cultivate a handful of promising young designers. On the other end of the spectrum are scrappy, under-the-radar companies like Digital Development Management, or DDM, that focus solely on video games. Founded in 2006 by Jeff Hilbert, one of the first agents to specialize in the genre, DDM is finding success catering to teams of developers -- the movie business equivalent of an independent production company versus one superstar producer. 'As games cost more to make, publishers need to make sure the teams have been well-vetted,' said Joe Minton, DDM's president. Or to put it more bluntly: 'Our industry is so young that we still have studios that are successful despite themselves,' said Trevor Fencott, chief executive of Bedlam Games, a Canadian developer of next-generation console games and a DDM client. 'But in this environment, do you really want to hand a check over to a developer that's brilliant but really bad at running a business?' 