Check out Unity 3d.

I feel like I want to do both, I mean I love to program but with this idea I have I want to design it and have all the creative control. I love the designing process as well and I get ideas for basic game designs other people have all the time. Do I have to choose?

No, there are still indie developers who have designed and coded their own game themselves. It really depends on your idea. I can tell you right now that you will not be making the next CoD, WoW, LoL or whatever by yourself. But you could possibly do something like Braid or Super Meat Boy.

First thing I'd say is to share your idea. It's highly doubtful that anyone will steal it, and the advice/help you get will be invaluable.

If you want to do it, do it. Even if you don't have the skills or not, you're gonna bump into some obstacles along the way and that will open your mind to new challenges and questions. If you have the time to do both things (school and programming), then why not do it? You wont lose anything and you will gain tremendous knowloedge.

There's no magic answer here, so don't expect anyone to give it to you. Just go and see what happens.

Cheers and good luck!

Should I try to get a team together to develop the game or focus on school and learning some C++?

School is job #1.
Learning stuff you want to learn is part of job #1 but it's priority #2.
Developing a game can wait until you've learned the stuff you need to know. You can use solo tools like RPG Maker or Game Maker to learn some concepts and get your hand in -- don't try to form a team until you know your stuff first (and then only team up with others who already know their stuff too).

I feel like I want to do both, I mean I love to program but with this idea I have I want to design it and have all the creative control. I love the designing process as well and I get ideas for basic game designs other people have all the time. Do I have to choose?

You are starting to cross the point at which your question really should be in “Breaking into the Industry”.

Anyway, what is your long-term goal? If you are self-sufficient and you have time, being in total control is quite fine.
If you dream of being a professional then you are in for a rude awakening.

Firstly you would virtually never have all creative control—especially when starting out but likely never. You will be implementing the core ideas handed down by the publisher or the upper-ups in your own company. A designer’s job is 99% about handling the creative visions of other people and making that vision clear and concise for those on your team.

Even if you ever did find yourself in such a position, say as the owner of your own company and fully self-funded, you would learn the hard way that creative control for any game belongs to all of the people working on it. You really don’t have much of a choice but to accept that or your projects will be messes, your personnel will leave, and anything you actually did complete would be of very poor quality.


My advice? If you want to be in total creative control, be a programmer. People who want to have all the creative control are bad designers, and I speak from personal experience having been both a professional designer and professional programmer that:
#1: Programming is more fun. You will likely agree once you have done enough of both.
#2: Programming is freedom. You can have crappy art even if you can’t draw. You can have terrible music even if you suck at piano. But you can’t have anything without being able to program.
#3: Programming salaries are higher than those of designers.
#4: Programmers who have a sense of proper game design rise quickly in the ranks.
#5: It is much easier to get a job as a programmer than as a designer.

Part of the reason programming is more fun than designing is because as a programmer you can actually exercise your sense of game design during the programming process, which means you don’t really have to let go of the fulfillment you get from designing. And programmers with a good sense of game design are much rarer than typical programmers, making them much more valuable in the industry and much more appreciated by their employers.


L. Spiro