*Sorry for Necro'ing This*

Since you have programming experience, jumping into game development should be a breeze ;)

That is... for the most part, haha. You want to make sure that you have enough projects and experience building games so that people will think of you as a game developer. You're on the right track, but I'll give you some advice that I give to most people who want to strike out as a game developer.

Firstly, start small. I can't stress this enough. Don't try to embark on your dream game right away. You don't have enough experience so it's probably going to end up as failure. This doesn't apply to everyone(and those that make their dream game in their first go are really talented and super rare), so just take it as a grain of salt.

Secondly, Get Involved. Join Forums, go to meetups, whatever. Not only will this serve as a place for inspiration - it allows you to communicate and perhaps collaborate with other game developers. It's just a place to grow your skills and show people what you're working on. I would recommend TigSource.

Thirdly, Don't Give Up. Everyone is going to hit a bump in the road at some point. You're going to feel like you're not cut out to be a game developer, but don't listen to it. I'm sure you've run into situations where you felt like giving up but you just pulled through. This is exactly what game development is. It's not something that you can get good at overnight and in order to get good at it you're going to have to slog through millions of swamps and you're going to have to climb a lot of mountains.

You may fall into "slumps" where you lose inspiration, but just keep "fighting" through it. Your subconscious can be very powerful, at times, but a disciplined mind learns to ignore these things.

Good Luck,

~Syrup

Thanks, I'm in agreement, I doubt I could ever give up so no fears there. The get involved advice is something I hear a lot and so I've been working at that, about a month ago I started reading up on an Open Source game project, a completely unknown game really but I figure O/S work on my portfolio on a game is good stuff independent of how well known it is (Bay12's Liberal Crime Squad) and since I play it a lot I am already familiar with mechanics. I also have the idea of joining in with minecraft mod making but haven't found an entry into that just yet.

Anyone reading this have an opinion on what would look better, mod development on a known game or O/S work on an unknown game? My time is short since I'm repairing peoples computers to make ends meet right now so I can't afford to do both.