Imagine the plight of the indie PC game developer who has something really creative, a little different, perhaps a bit wacky to show off, but the industry's publishers seem to be focused elsewhere -- particularly on the big blockbusters, like "Doom 3" or the long-awaited "Half-Life 2," which exploded onto store shelves Tuesday.

A professor who specializes in game design and programming at the Rochester Institute of Technology says if you're that developer looking for a break, he may have the answer.

Taking a cue from the music industry -- and from the once-standard practice of creating 45-RPM "singles" with both an "A" and a "B" side -- Professor Andrew Phelps is recommending that the industry consider a "B side" to PC games. In other words, leave some room on, say, "Madden NFL 2005" for a small, experimental, bonus game that would have no chance of making it onto store shelves otherwise.

[Phelps goes into more detail in his opinion piece, "The Game Industry Needs B Sides," at http://www.corante.com/gotgame/archives/006154.html]

"Developers say there's no wiggle room to try anything different," says Phelps. "But, in my scenario, there would be the main game that sells the disk, that's meant to be the hit. And then there'd be this second game that would come as a freebie -– that wouldn't necessarily produce income for the developer, but it would showcase his work and give him the opportunity to display something really creative. And, perhaps, include a link to his other work."

Phelps notes that the "B-side" game could be determined in any number of ways.

"Imagine if, for instance, Electronic Arts announced that the 'B-side' of its next Madden football game is up for grabs," Phelps suggests. "Can you picture the excitement within the developer community? EA might even hold a well-publicized "American Idol"-like talent search competition with the winner getting the coveted space -- and maybe even a contract to do a subsequent game."

Electronic Arts chose not to comment for this story.

But Bill Roper, CEO of San Francisco-based developer Flagship Studios -– formed last year by ex-employees of Blizzard Entertainment -– likes the idea just fine.

"I like the spirit behind it," he says. "It's a real challenge these days for developers who are trying to do something different. And I understand why. It's difficult for publishers to justify to their shareholders and to themselves spending multi-million dollars on a project that may not pan out. When they look at it in the context of everything else they do, they'd rather go out and make the next iteration of a very successful franchise that's got a built-in fan base rather than roll the dice on something unknown and maybe a little weird."

Roper says that whether publishers adopt "B-sides" or come up with their own methods of supporting creative developers, the effort needs to be made.

"In both the film and music industry, many studios have divisions that are specifically charged with going out there and funding and distributing independent work," Roper adds. "I don't know of any game publisher that has carved out a portion of their company that's devoted to doing that."

He attributes that to the relative immaturity of the games industry as compared with the film and music industries. As Hollywood matured, he says, it noticed there was a huge audience looking for something fresh, perhaps a little off-center.

"For the most part, those types of films rely a lot less on expensive special effects and more on better acting, tighter scripts, and more inventive plot lines," Roper notes. "That's why a movie like 'The Piano' can be done on a small budget and still do exceptionally well, win a lot of awards, and bring in a lot of money, especially when you consider what they spent on it."

At Vivendi Universal Games, brand manager Guy Welch -– who's worked on such big titles as the recently released "Tribes: Vengeance" and "Empire Earth 2," scheduled for spring 2005 -– calls the "B-side" idea "very interesting" and "one that definitely makes sense for Vivendi, which strongly believes in showcasing up-and-coming talent."

In fact, says Welch, "Vivendi has dipped its toe in the water several times on projects that had similar goals in mind."

The most famous example, he says, is "Counter-Strike," a multiplayer game that a group of independent developers produced by modifying Vivendi's 1998 hit "Half-Life." Eighteen months after the release of "Half-Life," Vivendi and Valve, the developer of "Half-Life," turned "Counter-Strike" into a commercial product, one that has since become the most popular online first-person shooter ever; at any given time of day, 80,000-120,000 gamers are playing it worldwide.

"That set the tone for the way we think about a lot of our PC products," says Welch. "For instance, during the development of 'Tribes: Vengeance,' a first-person shooter that we released on Oct. 5, some independent developers who call themselves Clancore Design Group approached us and asked if they could take the game's engine and create a huge, mechanized robot fighting game. We loved the idea and gave the go-ahead to the 32 volunteers in Clancore to start working on 'Starsiege 2845,' which we hope will be a big hit for them."

Welch recalls another independent developer, Michael "KineticPoet" Johnston, who came up with the idea of taking Vivendi's 2001 first-person shooter, "Tribes 2," and creating a sports modification called "Team Rabbit."

"It was so well-received that we wound up bringing Michael onto the team at Irrational Games, the Canberra, Australia-based developer of 'Tribes: Vengeance.' I believe it's really in our best interest to keep our games fresh and new, to make these opportunities available for our games to be extendable. That's why, when we release some games, we put lots of developer tools onto the Internet that anyone can download for free. That's part of our philosophy – we release a commercial piece of software and, pretty soon, it becomes a sandbox and we give the tools to people to graft their own ideas onto the game."

Similarly, there are currently several showcases for independent developers to display their wares, including the Independent Games Festival, to be held in conjunction with the Game Developers Conference 2005 in San Francisco March 7-11 (http://www.gdconf.com/). And, for the first time, the SlamDance Film Festival 2005 -– to be held January 21-28 in Park City Utah -– will add an independent games competition (http://www.slamdance.com/games/) "to aid developers through industry connections and national exposure."

But until game publishers as a whole become more active in supporting the development of creative new games, says Professor Phelps, developers will need to resort to showing off and, perhaps, distributing their games independently on the Internet.

"Unfortunately, that limits developers to the PC platform," he says, "because the channels of distribution for console games are wholly owned by the hardware manufacturers -– Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo."

Flagship's Roper agrees that digital distribution is an excellent alternative to making a deal with a publisher.

"While there are some publishers who will take some risks -– as we've seen with Namco's publishing of the Japanese game 'Katamari Damacy' – until there are more, some developers have done a fine job of distributing their own games over the Web. These are success stories like 'Savage' by S2 Games – (http://www.s2games.com/) or 'Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates' by Three Rings Design – (http://www.puzzlepirates.com/about/ -- or 'A Tale In The Desert' by eGenesis (http://www.atitd.com/. They're all small, creative, inventive games, built with small teams on completely non-extravagant budgets. No, they don't sell five or 10 million units, but they're doing just fine, and they seem to have gamers excited enough that they've built up fan bases."

As for Professor Phelps' idea of "B-sides" for games, he's still waiting for feedback from the industry. And one day -– who knows? -- maybe a really great "B side" game may become the hit, overshadowing the "A side." Anyone remember the Dionne Warwick song "Any Old Time Of The Day?" Probably not. But its "B-side" was "Walk On By" which, in 1964, shot her right up to the top of the charts.

Paul "The Game Master" Hyman was the editor-in-chief of CMP Media's GamePower. He's covered the games industry for over a dozen years. His columns for The Reporter run exclusively on the Web site.