I've designed and coded a few games in my 15 or so years on it. The best advice I can give you is to start off small, and work in incremental achievements. If you try to encompass the entire game in one plan, you will crash and burn, especially if you're working by yourself. Modularize and integrate.
Unfortunately, the game industry is pretty stagnant in terms of income. A code monkey working for a major publisher doesn't get paid near as much as someone putting their skills to use in heavy industry controls or office/administerial solutions.
As for programming suites, I've found Java + Java3D or C# + XNA work really well to begin with. I'll generally encompass my multimedia reliance into a common interface, so if I decide to "upgrade" my design from C# to C++, I can easily write a wrapper in DirectX to satisfy any dependancies on XNA.
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