I'm sure most of my friends know that I, alongside a few friends, have been creating a video game. Now I'm not sure how many of you know the passion that goes behind this. This is more then just something we do with our spare time. This is something we, at least the most devoted of us, hope to one day make a living off of.
The video game industry is a vast and lucrative industry dealing with entertainment. Even during this recession the video game industry has continued to grow. Now not everyone who wants to get into the video game industry has to be someone sitting behind a computer at some big company.

1) There is a lot more that goes into making games then just lines of programming code. Artistically speaking we have sprite artists, concept artists, 3D modelers, and more. The sound and music in games doesn't come from no where. There must be people able to produce background music to accompany the sounds of guns firing and enemies exploding. No matter what you're selling you need marketing. You can have the best game in the world, but if no one knows it exists it won't make a penny.
Lastly it is not the programmers who decide the main character should be able to fly when running at full speed. The programmers just make these things happen. It is the Game Designer who comes up with all the ideas for the game.

2) Also getting into the game industry isn't as hard as you might think. You don't have to be part of some large Game Publisher. There are plenty of people who go solo or form small groups to produce their own self-funded games. These games tend to be 2D more casual and time friendly games. Most of these games come from the video game industry's indie scene. Thanks to digital distribution anyone with the skills and passion to make games and sell them can do so. Some well known Indie games are: Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers, and World of Goo.

The time has never been greater for Indie games. For a long time solo and small-team developers have developed games for the PC, but thanks to new download services like Playstation Network, Xbox Live Indie Games, and Wii Ware Indie Developers can market their games to console users. Not even cell phones are safe from digital distribution. Many of the iPhone's many apps are produced by Indie Developers.

Seeing all this opportunity and having a strong passion for Game Design I have made it my goal to become a true Indie Game Developer. My current project 'Divine Space' has seen a lot of work in Game Maker. A lot of Indie Developers frown upon Game Maker because of its simplicity as a tool for game design, but I'm not so proud as to not use it. My logic is that any tool that can be used to create a selling product is a good tool.

Divine Space is nearing its completion. In order to rise awareness of my game I've been hard at work on both a website dedicated to it and a Flash version of it. If you've been on the internet you've more then likely seen or interacted with a Flash application. Newgrounds.com is a site dedicated to works made in Flash. Let me create an analogy so that you might understand what it was like going from Game Maker's programming language of GML to Adobe Flash's programming language of AS3.
I would say it's like learning how to build a Medieval castle out of MegaBlocks. You know those huge blocks for toddlers? Now you're using the smaller normal Legos. All the principles of building the castle are the same, but now you have a lot more pieces you have to use and must pay a lot more attention to detail to obtain the same result.

In Game Maker if I wanted to create a bunch of enemies I'd write:

//Create Event
spawn=0;
KC=0;
KameKaziCross=false;

//Step Event
spawn+=.5;
if spawn=200 KamekaziCross=true;
if KamekaziCross=true
{
KC+=1;
if KC=1 instance_create(84,16,oKamekazi);
if KC=3 instance_create(168,16,oKamekazi);
if KC=5 instance_create(252,16,oKamekazi);
if KC=3 instance_create(336,16,oKamekazi);
if KC=1 instance_create(420,16,oKamekazi);
if KC=5 {KamekaziCross=false; KC=0;}
}

Now to get the same thing done in Adobe Flash with AS3:

//EnemySpawn Class
public var kC:Number=0;
public var kamekaziCross:Boolean=false;

public function stepEvent()
{
spawn+=0.5;

//=======Spawn Times=======
if (spawn==200) kamekaziCross=true;

//=======Formations=======
if (kamekaziCross==true) {kC+=1; if (kC==6) {kameKaziCross=false; kC=0;}}
}

//Game Class

//=======Enemy Formations=======
if (enemySpawn.kamekaziCross==true)
{
if (enemySpawn.kC==1) {enemyCreate(84,16,1); enemyCreate(420,16,1);}
if (enemySpawn.kC==3) {enemyCreate(168,16,1); enemyCreate(336,16,1);}
if (enemySpawn.kC==5) enemyCreate(252,16,1);
}

public function enemyCreate( xPos:Number, yPos:Number, type:Number )
{
var newEnemy:Enemy = new Enemy( xPos, yPos );
newEnemy.assignType(type);
army.push( newEnemy );
addChild( newEnemy );
}

Crazy eh?