if you are a great artist, try to find a good programmer.

If you want to also code your own video game then take a couple of years first in learning/practicing.
Also start small, very small, code simple games for the start. Do not start with complex games, you will fail.

I've tried to cook up a few games myself, and I've learned the hard way that the worst thing you can do is overreach. Start out small, with, say, one of those mindlessly amusing Flash arcade-style games, and move up from there. Don't expect to produce Portal on your first try. And in my experience there's pretty much a mutual inverse correlation between artistic ability and programming ability, so you are probably going to need at least two people to make more than the simplest game.

Since others have already covered some of the skill stuff...

Figure out what you need. If you want to make, say, a 2D game about killing zombies, write down all the art assets you need. Zombie idle animation, zombie walking animation, zombie attack animation, zombie death animation, foreground art, background art, object art, etc etc. Same goes for programming and design. This will give you an idea of you're over-scoping. A lot of people, for instance, want to make an RPG - but it's a lot of effort to do so.

It's hard work and it not be fun at times. Things will not work the way you want and you will not be able to do what you want. The sooner you realize that, the easier it will be. Braid was a two-man project that took 3-years working full time to make and the creator spent 200K of his own money to help fund development. If you're trying to make even a smaller game like Braid, you're going too far. Stick with a 1-screen, simple simple simple concept first. You'll learn whether you're just curious about games or you actually like making them.

Mod first. It's pretty difficult to jump straight into full game development without guidance like a school program or a heck of a lot of personal dedication and sacrifice. Modding is easier and can help ease you into things. As an artist, find games that let you import or otherwise create art and try making some things for them. It doesn't matter if you like the game or not - chances are, you're not going to like a lot of the work you do so get over it. MUGEN for instance uses sprites. Elemental has both a in-game editor for basic stuff and probably supports custom stuff. Fallout 3 is easy to mod as far as terrain and using 3d tiles.

You sound like a guy with an idea that can draw. Get over it. You'll need to contribute and will not be able to sit back and be a boss. If you want to do art, make art. If you want to do design, design stuff. In a small team, you'll have to do all that. Right now, probably your best bet is to write up a game design document as part of pre-production. You can find an example or two on the web. If your design document for your game is less than 15 pages or so, you're probably doing something wrong.

I doubt that you will be successful in either film making or gaming if you leave out the storyboarding aspect.

demidyad, can you show us some of your games and films? Personally, I'd like to see what your majors in game design and film have produced.

They still story board, if only in their head.

Uou have to

1. Story board for the cinamatic, 

2. story board for the game play.

My first suggestion: Make a text adventure! Simple to do, and with the right engine it's 90% creativity and 10% programming. I really should finish that text adventure I'm working on...

I recommend doing a text-based game first of all. Art assests are hard to come by and make it more complicated.

You really need the expierence of planning the game out, trying ideas, and implementing all the raw code before you have to worry about the overhead of 3D modeling etc etc

If you are a coder, use XNA, if you aren't a coder, get a coder.

I've been making games professionally for 15 years now, doing it by yourself is almost impossible, the best place to get started is to ask anyone on games making websites if they need any help. After getting a bit of experience you'll understand what it takes to make a game, and you'll have contacts to help you make it!

Hey, some (crazy) people actually like QA! That's offensive to them 8D

My pro tip is to start small. I'm sure you have some big idea about an epic game that will change the face of gaming IF NOT THE WORLD forever. Now, I'm not saying to give up on that dream, but for your first game you should aim a little lower. Make a tetris clone or something. The advantages of this are:

• You can get something showing on the screen more quickly. This will help your motivation- nothing kills your spirit faster than staring at text on a screen which some day in the far off future might turn into a game. Actually booting up and playing around with your creation will give you the boost to go back to the code and fix the inevitable bugs, and add new features.
• You will make mistakes. But that won't matter, because you'll be forgetting about this game in a few days and moving on to something new, which you will be able to make with a whole new load of mistakes, hopefully different ones. I once spent a couple of years on my super epic game (yes, sagittary, an RPG) and then a couple more on a sequel with the same engine. By the end of that I was cursing all those simple mistakes I made due to inexperience right at the beginning, which were still haunting me 4 years later. If I'd done a few simpler games before that, I might have known to avoid those mistakes in the first place, and probably taken less time to finish overall.

Once you've finished your simple game. Make something just a little more complicated (but still pretty simple). Keep on just pushing the boundaries a little each time until you're ready to build your super game.

Story will depend on what game you're making and the process you use. In some games, story is pretty important and more so than gameplay. In others, it's non-existent. In still others, it's a balance of both. What works for you and for the game, will depend on what you're trying to accomplish. A good story can help, but it can also detract. A bad story can hurt, but it can also be superfluous.

If your game is heavily atmospheric and gameplay based, you may be able to get away with just a basic skeleton of a story that helps you determine the pace of the game. If you're building something that requires dialogue and heavy character interaction, you won't be able to get away with as little.

There's no real right answer. Ultimately, though, you should have at least some general premise to help you guide what the game is going to be about and with which to apply an aesthetic too. It also helps to get it down in writing so that team members know what you mean. If you're thinking of a twin stick shooter that's dark and moody and take place after an apocalypse, but the only thing you say is "Twin stick shooter x Bullet hell", your artist may give you Telly Tubbys take over the world. If you have less than that, designer 1 may make a close quarters level while you make a wide open sandbox while your artist makes tentacle porn.