Why yes, and my second professional one even ships next week.

Guess I should have figured this crowd might have a few game developers. Thanks for the pointers, once I set up a blog and write a few game reviews so I'll have a little more to show for myself when applying, I'll start with Java or C# then C++ and look towards Unity.

How does HTML 5 operate? As for flash, I have flash 8, can I still do quite a bit with that?

Twesterm what game would that be? And yes, but then I got LBP and tried to make a level, and decided that I sucked at it. I then went online and realized that ALL gamers suck at making games. Seriously thought there would be good UGC levels in LBP, but let me tell you, there aren't. :(

Isn't that the dream of all young gamers until they figure out how much work is involved?

I know that's how it went with me.

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.

I made a couple of small games when I was younger.

One of the more crazy ideas was a 4-dimensional tetris. It worked with a 6x6x6x8 pit. You see 6 6x6x8 3D top down views of the 6 cross sections of the 4-dimensional pit. As a training level you can play in a 6x6x8 3-dimensional pit viewed on screen by 6 6x8 2D views. That way you can get used to what happens when you rotate a 3D block in a 2D view and how parts appear in adjacent views.
After a while you could actually sort of get used to working with 3D shapes in 4 dimensions. Too bad I never got to finish it as I lost all the source code in a HDD crash. Young and naive, no backups, no internet, stupid.

The last games I made were in '04, a couple of sixaxis type games. The company I was working for included accelerometers in their gps navigation system. I used these to create some tilt based games as easter eggs. By tilting the device you could guide a ball through a maze, play a version of Arkanoid, and steer a little ship through a cavern that slowly narrows and keeps speeding up.

However over the years worked sucked the creativity out of me and long hours behind a computer starting taking a serious toll on my neck and back. Being a perfectionist doesn't help either working till late at night, always finding something else to improve.

Anyway don't get a job in software programming and think you can work on your own projects along side. It works for a while but you will get tired of both in the end, at least that how it worked out for me. Now I have kids which is awesome too, but doesn't leave much time and energy to sink into deep thought and work on a complex project. Maybe when they're going to school and become a little more self sufficient I'll boot up the old Msdev again or I guess iOS is the place to be nowadays.

First was Ghostbusters and Kinect Star Wars next week (which I realize isn't super popular here, but, hey, it was still an experience ).

Before that, I did some RPG Maker projects but only ever really finished one and it was a big inside joke.  I did A LOT of Neverwinter Nights stuff, I loved making modules in that.  I went to school at The Guildhall at SMU and did a 2D game that was a lot of fun to do as well as some 3D mods and levels that were cool. 

I also did A LOT of stuff for my own custom Dungeons and Dragons campaign.  I had several multiyear campaigns and made an entire universe for those.  If I could make my own dream game some day, it would be to make those campaigns into a series.  I use to dream of making them into a JRPG but I've sort of fallen out of love with those.  I don't really want to make them a WRPG since you don't play as a single main character, but I much prefer the gameplay in WRPG's.

I've made a single game before with Gamemaker, but it wasn't published or anything like that. It was in my Into to Game Design class I took last semester. Everyone was in a team of 3-4 people. We all had their own role like I was the lead developer(I came up with the game), there was a programmer and writer on my team. We took second place in a contest so it was a pretty neat experience.

gotta keep this tagged!

Vgc should band together to make a game, what a kick ass game developer we'd make