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I work for the company that makes 3DGameStudio

• Torque2D - GarageGame's upcoming 2D tiling engine SDK. This looks promising, but is in its early-adopter release. Not yet ready for primetime, according to GarageGames.
• Pygame - Python-based 2D engine. My feeling is that Python is a great language to start game development in.
• Orbforms Designer - Why limit yourself to the PC? PDA games can give you a greater return on your time than Windows games do. (Per man-hour, our PDA titles bring us more revenue than our PC titles do.)
• Game Editor - For those who want to go even higher-level than an SDK.

• 3D Gamestudio - The engine of choice for our latest games. I love it, and hope they'll extend to the Xbox 360 platform when it comes out.
• Torque - Maybe the single most popular 3D engine among indies and hobbyists. Focuses, in part, on cross-platform compatibility (Windows/Linux/Mac).
• OGRE - An open-source package. Frequently updated. Some nice projects using the engine.
• DarkBASIC - A popular package among new developers and independents.

• Game Tunnel - Previews, articles, and reviews of indie games.
• DIY Games - Covering the latest independent/shareware titles.

Yes, it wouldn't do any harm to brush up on your C++ skills. If you don't have a C++ compiler yet, get Dev-C++ http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

Then try to finish at least one game. It doesn't matter how simple it is. If you then want to concentrate on design, instead of the nitty-gritty details, you might want to try http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/

For 3D, 3DGamestudio http://www.conitec.net/a4info.htm is a cheap, decent, all-around game authoring system. You can cobble together a quick FPS and if you put more time into it, a good RPG.

The two I just mentioned are for the windows platform, btw.

If you really want to start with a good (cross-platform) 3D engine, Irrlicht http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/ is a good open-source one. It works with Dev-C++.

The important thing is to get one game out.

Quite a number of commercial and amateur games are produced using GameStudio, which is pretty much what you're asking for. It's Win32 commercial software itself, unfortunately; the entry edition only costs $49, however. The graphics look quite impressive, it supports DirectX 9, and the more professional versions support stuff such as bones, pixel shaders or a physics engine. There are extensive online support libraries and forums for it, as the SDK is available for free. The program itself is rather easy to use, I have a friend here who uses it to teach a 3D game design class.

Unfortunately, at least with 3D games, making a game requires mainly 3D graphics and modelling rather than programming skills. So unless you teach kids how to do modelling in 3D Studio (and pay for that), they simply won't get the skills anywhere that it takes to program an attractive 3D game.

We've used Python in a few projects, from a relatively simple action/puzzle game, TapDown, to a larger, multi-user game. As jericho4.0 points out, it binds well with C, so for both projects, we wrote C/Python binders for the Fastgraph graphics library and the BASS audio library. I find that it's much easier to prototype in Python than in C, so, for example, when we wanted to implement a modified Perlin Noise algorithm for the larger project, we modelled it in Python first, then optimized the processor-consuming bits by implementing them in C.

I'd jump at the chance to use Python as a the scripting language in a first-person shooter. The Conitec engine uses something called C-Script, which is nice, but not nearly as sexy as Python is. Some drawbacks come to mind, (just off the top of my head, it may be tricky to have an entity sit around in the middle of its script), but its ease-of-use, combined with the simplicity of dropping down to C for the lower-level stuff makes it very appealing for all sorts of games.
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Inago Rage - Create, fight, and fly in a first-person shooter.

It's been my experience that Indie developers are, as you say, eager to share resources that benefit the game development community. This might include marketing strategies, source code, or tools. However, as businesses, small studios have to have something to sell; traditional business models suggest that it makes sense to retain control of certain assets.

One scenario where a business might open source an entire product is an MMOG where the client and server are under an open license, and revenue is generated by unique, pay-for-play quests. I'm sure that the optimal level of open-sourceness varies from project to project.

(As a sidenote, /. did a thread about all 81 IGF submissions earlier in the week.)
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Inago Rage - An Independent Game About Building and Shooting Things

I think the big question is, how can we get small game studios back? Is it really not possible for a small team to make commercial games?

I believe that the problem smaller studios face can be overcome with some lateral thinking. The problem is two-fold: production costs and marketing costs are too high to allow indies to compete on equal footing with the big boys. The solution, then, is to not compete on equal footing.

Don't: Try to copy a game that took 60 people 3 years to create.
Do: Draw from an existing genre, but come up with a unique twist -- something meaty that doesn't exist elsewhere.

Don't: Compete with larger productions on the same style of graphics.
Do: Come up with a unique look; it's easier to wow people with a fresh style. (Though Monolith is not a small studio, Tron 2.0 was the opposite of the hyper-realism trend, and set itself apart on appearance, among other things.)

Don't: Try to out-advertise Activision, Microsoft, or Infogr- er- Atari. A small studio's meager advertising budget should be used towards development.
Do: Make as much use of word-of-mouth marketing as is humanly possible. It's easier to connect with your individual players because... well... there are fewer of them.

Don't: Re-invent the wheel. id Software must create its own 3D engine from scratch; you don't (necessarily) have to.
Do: Make as much use of middleware as possible. You don't need to be an artist to create skycubes. You don't need to know DirectX or OpenGL intimately to create an engine. You don't need to write your audio engine from scratch.

And I deeply believe better games would be coming out of a smaller and more laid back studio...

I like the cut of your jib. I hope you're right.

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Inago Rage - A first-person shooter where you fight in arenas of your own creation.

Independent studios want to create wonderful, experimental titles, but are, in part, held back by business requirements. As businesses, our first priority is to become profitable, and the least-risky way to do this is to create more traditional offerings. (The same is true for large development houses.) Fortunately for us, better middleware tools and increased publicity can free us of this constraint. The former will allow us to experiment and develop easier; the latter will allow us to reach an audience now reserved for the large publishers. As these conditions improve, you'll see independents take more risks.

Middleware comprises the audio libraries, AI plugins, and 3D engines such as Torque, Conitec A6, and FMOD. These tidbits are the lifeblood of independents. Without them, we'd have to code everything from scratch, and you'd see even more Tetris clones than you do now -- little innovation. With them, we're freed from the low-level stuff. We can create games that look and sound good enough to attract consumers. As middleware improves, it'll become even easier to experiment and innovate.

Publicity is trickier -- while events such as the Independent Games Festival allow us to bend the ears of larger publications, it's still the big studios that are going to command the previews and exclusives. Having approached a number of print publications, I've found that it can be difficult to secure a sizable preview for our game, even though I think folks might like to hear about where we're innovating. But even this is improving; sites like The Adrenaline Vault are particularly indie-friendly, often posting press releases from smaller development studios.

I think, then, that it's only a matter of time before the smaller studios attempt experimental titles in substantial numbers. Many will be terrible; some will be great fun. But as it becomes easier to experiment, you bet we'll be doing more of it, simply because we can.

"If Microsoft can woo more developers to Xbox, the balance of power in the next round could change."

I'm blatantly biased here, but I'd be thrilled if Microsoft were to make overtures to the independent game developer community. Some noises were made along those lines in November, 2000, but they didn't follow up tangibly. As an independent developer, I don't feel drawn towards Xbox development the way I did, Pocket PC development. In that arena, MS gave the development tools away for free, (something I always felt Palm should have done to keep Pocket PC from gaining market share from 2001 onward).

Xbox development is said to be technically similar to Windows desktop development, so from a development standpoint, I imagine that authors of 95/2K/XP software would feel comfortable developing for the console. Further, 3d engines such as Torque and Conitec's 3DGS make it possible for modest-sized groups to develop popular titles. But both the developers of such engines, and the developers of games, face restrictions imposed by the console manufacturer(s). Conitec's Doug Poston states his case -- the manufacturers make the cost-of-entry too high for smaller studios.

Does the manufacturer-imposed barrier-to-entry for console development raise the quality of games, or does it mean fewer interesting titles and less experimentation? (I suppose the businessman-side of me would be thrilled if larger studios abandoned the desktop PC, leaving the market open. But somehow, I think that'd be a phyrric victory for all of us.)

There are a few of these already. Most of them are slightly shy of the full graphical splendor of some of the best engines, but a talented person can do some good stuff with them.

Extensions for some of them, such as 3D Game Studio, can be written in an included C-like script language, or as a full-fledged C++ plug-in.

3D Game Studio

DarkBasic

3D Rad