But WHY do you think that?

My advice would be this...

1. Use C++ to create a command-line game. The logic here is to see what you can do with just the language on its own. Give it a title screen, main menu and then numbered-menu selections for the main game itself. It doesn't have to be fancy - just enough to enter keyboard text, load and save a game and to produce a game without the complications(distractions!) of learning APIs and generating art resources etc. My first command-line game was a turn-based RPG...it was a wonderful experience that taught me a great deal.

2. If you are using Windows, now go learn the Windows API. Your previous command-line effort will leave you hungry to put a simple image on the screen - the Windows API will allow you to make a more visual version with the added benefit of "point'n'click" with the mouse. In fact, the Windows API(using GDI+ or whatever it uses now) can allow you to make a simple action game such as pong or space invaders. I reckon one could even write a Ray-caster demo with WinAPI...possibly more. Its really a case of setting up a loop that runs on a timer, polling input from the keyboard & mouse, updating player/enemy positions etc, and then rendering...

3. With a sound grounding in both C++ and the Windows API, its time to consider two things - swatting up on your math skills, and learning a bit of software development. A bit of trig and algebra go a long way for those first few 2D games whilst software development will make you a more disciplined programmer. Your applications will have less bugs and your code will be clean and easy to understand...

...with all of this, games development will become a lot easier to understand. Take it from one who made just about every mistake under the sun when starting out...I would spare you that pain! o_O

If you decide to go with the previous poster's recommendation and learn the Windows API at an early stage, be prepared to spend considerable time just trying to grasp the concept of it. This particular step is difficult, and may kill your motivation altogether. It may seem like a trivial task, but just initializing a client window literally means hundreds of lines of code in this case. To complicate things further, the windows API uses their own type definitions for variables, instead of "int", you get "DWORD" etc, making the code almost unreadable at first for someone coming from a "pure" c++ environment. The beauty of frameworks like SDL and SFML takes care of all this (among other things) for you.

Don't get me wrong, I would still encourage you to grab the bull by its balls at some time and make use the windows API directly. Just remember it might seem overwhelming at first!

That is a really bad idea.

Win32 is a right pain in the ass to learn, and...

It's dying. Microsoft is transitioning people to RT, basically you are doing the equivalent of learning Esperanto.

I mean, learning Win32 has some merit, especially in some more or less niche areas, but at this stage in your career, certainly not. Plus, my god does it teach bad practices.

I agree that the Windows API is a mess and teaches bad practice. My previous post was intended as a warning more than anything, where some of the API issues were highlighted.

However, unfortunately it's not dying. Despite Microsoft's recent efforts on Windows 8, Windows XP/Vista/7 are still by far the most used systems, and they will most probably remain to be over the next couple of years. For example, in September 2012, more than 21% of all desktops out there still ran under Windows XP! (http://en.wikipedia....kimedia-stats-1)

Yeah, but reality is, almost nobody is writing to the Win32 level anymore. You are right, the API will be with us for a very very very long time.

However, people are either using a higher level framework ( like Qt, used for example by Autodesk Maya ) especially if they want to write cross platform code. Otherwise people are targeting the .NET layer above Win32. Even game developers dont really work with Win32... they write a small shim layer and that's about it. This coincidentally, is a "very good thing(tm)".

If you really want to look at app development using C++, look in to Qt.