Alright, i am a high school student in my final year. Simply put, my goal is to pursue a career in the video game industry.

My knowledge of this is very limited as one would imagine, but i am trying to get into game design/programming

I am posting here because i would like to know the best route to go in order to achieve this, essentially what i should learn.

I am very sorry if i have worded this in a confusing way but i hope i can get some advice/info or anything really on game design/programming

Which are you wanting to go into? Game design or programming or both?

If programming, Python is an excellent language to start with.

If game design... 'game design' is an overused term with a poorly defined meaning, that is rather all encompassing.
So to get a better idea of what you are actually interested in, explain what you want to do, without using the word 'develop', 'design', 'game' or 'create'.

Are you wanting to write the stories? Write the character backgrounds? Draw art? Balance gameplay mechanics? Layout and engineer levels/maps/areas? Define background lore? Do 3D modelling? Plan player quests? Script events? Calculate probabilities and chance?

What part of making games are actually the parts that interest you?

Really what interests me about this area is programming, i would really be interested in going into programming, i guess game design is a bad term to use. But i really do not even know where to start, or how i will persue it after high school

Mostly on the mechanical side (making the game mechanics function properly, putting everything together etc)

You might want to look at getting a formal education after high school, if you have the opportunity. In the meantime, experiment! Check around for online resources and learn some programming or scripting along the way. As Servant of the Lord brought up, Python is a good choice, and C# or Java are possibilities as well.

And don't neglect your math courses. If you really want to get into programming, you'll regret not paying attention at some point. In some places, colleges may require a higher level for a programming course than your high school let you leave with.

Tom Sloper's excellent FAQ has a lot of good information in it, about the nature of the business and game design.

Game design: I have lots of ideas. I make up game rules, cut out cardboard figures, and come up with creative adventures.
Game programming: printf("Hello, World!");

If you want to become a programmer, the best thing you can do is pick up some introductory programming books and start learning.

Game programming is just programming.

Start with your simple "Hello, World!" program, learn how to write bigger and bigger programs, eventually you can write your own 'Tic Tac Toe' game or text adventure. Several years of work later you'll be able to build nice-looking 3D games, with the help of animators and artists and other team members.

In that case, Python is an excellent choice. Here's the tutorials and documentation.

There are a number of possible languages to start with*, many of them good, and regardless of which one you choose, the more important thing is to stick with it for several years. If you start a project, try to finish it. Try not to overreach too far too soon with large projects. Start small and work your way up - it takes time to learn how to program well, but it's worth it.

* [size=2]Aside from Python, two other choices include C# and Java. There are others as well.

This all helped a great deal, i believe i will start learning c# and python

thank you guys for the help

on the languages note, are there any recommended books to pick up for c#/python?

I haven't read his book firsthand, but I have referred people to RB Whitaker's C# tutorials before and it expands on them. You can try the site and see if it works for you.

I highly recommend starting with just one language. Once you learn one language (a matter of years), it is very easy to learn a second or third (a matter of weeks). Trying to learn them both at once might complicate and confuse things, I think. Either Python or C# would be a good choice, so you should just pick one (such as C#) and run with it.

Once you start, it's also important not to switch to another language until you really understand the one you started with. Most ideas of programming are shared between languages, and apply to most languages. But each language can be presented visually a different way (the language's 'syntax'). Learning multiple languages at once might bog you down with trying to memorize two different sets of unrelated syntax - the "language" part of programming languages, which might keep you from going deep in the real "programming" part of programming languages.

C# is an equally excellent choice - so run with that. Visual C# in Microsoft's Visual Studio suite is probably the best "IDE" to type your code into. An IDE is similar to Microsoft Word, but you type the C# code language into it instead of the English human language. When finished typing code, you tell the IDE to run a Compiler (which usually comes with an IDE), and the Compiler takes your C# code language, and converts it to a different language that the computer can understand. Programming languages are the languages that sit between human language and computer language, to help us communicate our intentions to computers.

We think in english, mentally convert our thoughts to a programming language like C#, and then compile the programming language to a even lower-level language like assembly (one of the languages computers think in). Programming is learning how to convert our thoughts into the programming language we are using - the rest is taken care of by the computer.

Since I don't personally write in C#, others would have to suggest a good book. In general, I'd suggest getting two books on C# by different authors (so if you don't understand one author's description of something, you can read the other author's description). One should probably be a reference-guide style book. Also, pad out your knowledge with two or three C# online tutorials as well, and search for articles on specific topics if you have further questions.
Further, learning how to use google to do research is very important - most people know how to type something into google, but they don't know what to search for, or how to find out what to search for. They don't know how to research using google - they just spam questions on forums to have other people do the research for them.

Whenever you get truly stuck (your two books, the tutorials, articles, and online research all fail), then we are always happy to help.

After you've been working on becoming a good programmer for a while, you'll find that companies will state that experience within the game industry and/or a B.S. degree are required to be eligible for a programming position.

The best way to get experience is to collaborate with a mod team. You could possibly get an internship with a smaller game company for experience but volunteering for a mod team on a game you're interested in will not only give you experience, but also give you something to show off in a portfolio. It's extremely important that you have something to demonstrate to companies showing that you not only can deliver on what you say you can do, but that you have the passion and grit to follow through on projects not for the money, but for the love of it.

Of course, this is all after you are comfortable with the language(s) you choose to develop in and are comfortable with programming concepts in general.

Having a portfolio, even as a programmer, I feel is essential. Be sure to finish your projects and only show off what you consider to be your best work.

One of the greatest resources you have at your disposal (other than google) is your peers. Don't hesitate to ask questions of others especially here on gamedev when you encounter a difficult problem.

Lastly, be consistent. Try to at least program something, no matter how small it is, each day. You will be surprised how much more you learn in a shorter amount of time if you practice and experiment every day rather than every other day. On experimentation, don't ever be afraid to try out an idea because it might be a mistake and break your code. Breaking your code is a good thing. Look into how the code broke, why it broke, and how to fix it. You will run into bugs throughout your programming adventures; every programmer does. Being able to identify and fix your bugs quickly will be an indispensable skill for you to have.

Good luck, take your time, and have fun with the process