Hello. I've been playing and studying games for a long time, and in the not too distant future, will even be attending college with a focus on game design.

However, I want to get the ball rolling early, and try my hand at making a game myself. However, I'm not sure where to start. I'm well versed in game design (and design in general), and am decently apt at coding (I've made a few programs in Java and C++), but I've never actually made a game yet. So my questions are:

1) What types of games are best suited to being made by a single person?

I'd guess that this would be things that don't require a lot of content, like an RPG would, and not something that requires a ton of testing, like any PvP game.

2) What game development platforms work best for a single person?

I've played around a bit with Unity and tried looking at other systems, but most of them seem better suited for large projects with lots of people on them, and/or are very expensive. I've also seen a few things like RPG Maker and Game Maker, but those seem too simplistic to make a "real" game, and don't seem to leverage my ability to write code any. Is there a middle-ground between these, or am I not giving one side enough credit?

3) What is a good goal to strive for for a first game?

I recall reading about how new art students start by copying existing art. Should I try to re-create existing games as a first step, or branch out and do something new? How long should I expect to spend making the game? What's a good way to know if I'm being too ambitious and setting myself up for failure?

And in general, any other advice for a new game developer?

1) Pick something simple.

2) I found it funny when I read "too simplistic to make a *real* game".

I mean, being simple should be a good thing right? And what's a *real* game?! If you want to make an AAA title, you're doomed anyway. ;)

For the rest game makers are just fine. The thing about game makers is not that they are simple (that's the good side), it's that they have limitations (like no networking support or importing extern APIs, but some do have...). As for something "in-between", I'd say Unity is perhaps what you're looking for.

3) Starting a project is always easy, finishing one is always hard, remember this ;)

It's not making the core prototype work that is hard, it's to polish the game over and over.

1) What types of games are best suited to being made by a single person?

I'd guess that this would be things that don't require a lot of content, like an RPG would, and not something that requires a ton of testing, like any PvP game.

You're going to need to do a ton of testing no matter what you end up doing, but this is more or less correct. You need to build something that you can create all the content for. You could think about generating procedural content; I'm unqualified to discuss this, but there's a wealth of information about generating worlds on this guy's blog.

2) What game development platforms work best for a single person?

I've played around a bit with Unity and tried looking at other systems, but most of them seem better suited for large projects with lots of people on them, and/or are very expensive. I've also seen a few things like RPG Maker and Game Maker, but those seem too simplistic to make a "real" game, and don't seem to leverage my ability to write code any. Is there a middle-ground between these, or am I not giving one side enough credit?

If what you want to make is very similar to existing games, you can probably find a creation system to help do it. If it's very different, you're likely to be better off writing the code yourself. This is really hard to answer without knowing what type of game you have in mind. Whether you've acclimated to integrating libraries and API usage will inform whether you can build an engine out of off-the-shelf parts.

You're right about RPG maker, though. Mostly. You can make a very complex and detailed lo-fi RPG, and you can use a series of hacks to get more out of it, but in the end you're burning time and ingenuity to make a kludgy RPG maker game.

3) What is a good goal to strive for for a first game?

I recall reading about how new art students start by copying existing art. Should I try to re-create existing games as a first step, or branch out and do something new? How long should I expect to spend making the game? What's a good way to know if I'm being too ambitious and setting myself up for failure?

It'd be smart to make a Tetris clone and maybe a simple sidescroller as proof of concept. This should tell you very quickly whether your expectations at this stage are reasonable.

And in general, any other advice for a new game developer?

Don't drop out of college, don't quit your day job, don't go into the long grass.