I am also starting out like the OP in making games, I have good networking/server infrastructure background and scripting background. I am surprised that people have mentioned C# quite a lot (well ok I am not, but in its plain context I am). without mentioning existing game engines.like http://unity3d.com/ which uses C# as its language of choice for development. I dont think its a bad choice on a free license to get some things put together and learn some C# along the way.
I decided to go with Java for my first project for the reasons below:-
- Fairly easy for me to grasp first time (im a old timer php scripter and vb scripter/powershell scripter, easy high level programming is something I want, not something that looks like its written by an assembly wizard in his basement while he whispers to CPU's)
- full OOP language, looks like C and C++ which is good when moving on
- the JVM deals with GC, I don't want to mess about with that stuff until im working on harder stuff.
- Can make applets to create a browser based game (was also a requirement for us)
- I also like android SDK and i love the android platform, so Java be handy for this too
Anyway, good luck friend, I hope you find your footing and go onto good things
