[jackprw1]

Hi. I'm one of the probably numerous group of people who jumped into the community.
I want to make some small casual games, but for the life of me, I can't come up with any. If you ask me for a big kind of game, I could offer a few different ideas, but I know that starting out with a big project would be stupid, and I really just want to make a small game and feel the satisfaction of having it done within a couple of weeks.
I want to work on something, anything, but something that's also important for me is working on my own. I don't yet want to join any team or anything like that.
Anyway, the question is. How do you come up with a game? What's your process? Are there any books or anything that could help me on designing a game?
Thanks in advance.

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Designing is the easy bit.
Making the design come alive is the hard bit:

Neil's guide to game making as posted on this forum in September 2009:

1) Learn a programming language, everything about it and then some more.
2) Learn everything about Windows and how Windows works, which is significantly more complicated than "go into Control Panel and click this".
3) Learn many other programming languages since they are not all suitable for all jobs, some are better than others.
4) Write code, test, debug, test more, debug again, test some more and then test again. Do all the other add-ons for your game. Debug and test all of this.
5) Total time to do all of this: A few thousand hours and then some more most likely.

[Neil Jones]

Designing is the easy bit.
Making the design come alive is the hard bit:

Neil's guide to game making as posted on this forum in September 2009:

1) Learn a programming language, everything about it and then some more.
2) Learn everything about Windows and how Windows works, which is significantly more complicated than "go into Control Panel and click this".
3) Learn many other programming languages since they are not all suitable for all jobs, some are better than others.
4) Write code, test, debug, test more, debug again, test some more and then test again. Do all the other add-ons for your game. Debug and test all of this.
5) Total time to do all of this: A few thousand hours and then some more most likely.

[imafool4u]

I would recommend learning C or C++. Then check out some popular Game Engines and see if they offer development kits for it. Read hundreds of tutorials for the specific Game Engine you want to make a game with.

Unreal Development Kit
http://www.unrealtec...nt-kit-overview

[ACF1711]

Definitely learn a programming language or some other skill like modeling or animation. You won't get any jobs being the idea guy, if you learn a programming language you could start off small by joining some modding teams. (www.moddb.com).