New Game Designer

[DagekiVv]

I'm starting my first year of college in August and one of my classes is Computer Concepts and Information, this is because next semester I can take a Graphic Design course. I'm very serious in becoming a Game Designer, my friend and I want to start our own Garage Gaming company of sorts, our first games we know won't be A or B class maybe not even C or D class but we are very determined to get this going. Specially me, I've wanted to be a Game Designer since first played video games on the N64.

My main question is, where do I start? Without taking courses on Game Design (I plan on doing that in the future), what is a good program to start with, what do I need to practice, etc.

[exception]

That depends: what do you want to do? A modern game consists of a, let's say 2,5MB program and, like, 10GB of data. If you want to make a game alone, then I guess you don't want to compose your own orchestral music, but you won't get around designing your own models, drawing your own textures and recording your own sounds (well, there *are* libraries for all of it, but that wouldn't be much of your *own* game then, would it?)
So, if you want to do the software component:
(a) learn to program a computer in general (The Art of Computer Programming, although being somewhat outdated, is still a brilliant set of books) (~2 years)
(b) learn a suitable language to a beyond-everyday-usage-level (C++ seems to be a good choice here...). With beyond...-usage I mean: you know *all* of the languages features and flaws, plus the ones introduced by the compiler you use. Become aware of the different possibilities to use a given feature of your language. (Ongoing process, ~3 years for the start). Book recommendations: "The C++ Programming Language", the "Exceptional C++"-series, "Generic Programming and the STL". Oh, and not any of them, *all* of them.
(c) learn the specialities you need (proper usage of IEEE 754 comes to mind... furthermore, the libraries you need, OpenGL or DirectX etc. etc.) (Can be combined with a and b, so about +1 year) (mainly done from reading research papers - I don't know about books with information on, let's say, floating point expansions, persistence of linked data structures etc. And you will need such things.)
(d) learn something about software-engineering. You *do* want to reuse code which has been in production for several years, I guess. ("Design Patterns" is a must, the rest of the books about the topic I know are not in english, so no further recommendation here)

So,

what is a good program to start with, what do I need to practice, etc.

the program to start with is your browser, going to bookzilla.org and ordering some literature.

courses on Game Design (I plan on doing that in the future)

Well, I don't know about all of them. But I had such crap at university, and it was... crap. The things I really could put to use - I didn't belive it myself at first - were the ones I learned in theoretical computer science (robustnes, efficiency, exactness, how to use calculations with different sets of numbers, ...). That might be different with other courses, however, I prefer a good book. And beware: every book with "Game [programming, design, whatever]" on it should be burnt. They are crap. Don't waste your money and time on them. Buy the alternatives about that topic without the "Game"-logo (no matter what topic - "AI for Game Developers", "Physics for GD" (this one is from O'Reilly, which is why I bought it - great mistake)... they all suck. You have been warned.

[mikeb570]

Expanding on exception's B.), download Dev-C++ to start. Learn some basic stuff and once you get the feel for it you can move to Visual C++ if you like.
I just started playing around with Allegro, which is a 3rd party library for making games and it's seems pretty easy.

Here's the link right to the download for Dev-C++

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/dev-cpp/devcpp-4.9.9.2_setup.exe