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I am interested in designing/creating a video game, however I never have before.
I was wondering what people would suggest to get started, such as any books to read and programs to use.
Thanks for any help you might be able to provide

this is not really the board for it, but oh well.

If you want to program:
I started with python and pygame, there is a tool called livewires that makes it easy. but that is only 2d and if you live in the us, is hard to use because of the european spelling of everything.

For 3d, db is great.

My tips:

Learn to research your own questions before asking them. Why? Educated questions are the best questions. Plus, people are more likely to respond if you have a specific question.

If you are under 16 (don't post your age), I recommend you wait to get into programming and look into modding games. Programming is tough, especially for younger folks, and the modding route will help you to avoid that while still allowing you to work with game engine's and create some cool stuff. I recommend Source SDK (very well documented) and UnrealEd (very nice engine). If you want to do more outside of an FPS with these engine's it's going to require coding.

If you are over 16, the above route is still a good way to go. Modding isn't a route for kids, don't get that impression. It's very rewarding and often the quickest way into the game industry. Anyway, you could probably get into programming at this age. Playbasic and DBP are great ways to break in. If you are feeling really brave, learn C# and use XNA game studio.

As far as 3D apps go, Blender is free, well documented, has a great community and CAN produce awesome works of art. People complain that Blender doesn't have the abilities 3D Studio Max does. That's true to a certain degree, but it's the artist, not the tool, that get's the job done.

thenerd-
Thanks. I'll look into those programs. I wasn't sure what to post on though, so sorry about that.

Sid Sinister-
I did do some research, but wasn't finding very much, so I thought I would ask where other people got their start. Thank you for the tips though. I will look into that stuff too.

I have to politely disagree with this. I'm not gonna post my age but I'm under 16 and I started programming with Game Maker when I was in 6th grade (11 or 12 years old) and I've used that for a few years making decent games (I was programming not using the drag and drop stuff). Then I switched over to Dark GDK and C++ and now I'm working on a RPG. So far I made the Inventory system in it myself (its almost identical to Elder Scrolls Oblivion inventory), and I made a whole system to easily add crates, enemies, items and such to interact with, along with collisions, attacking, and stats. Have not started enemy AI yet though because I don't have a model for an enemy and I don't like to use place holders. But, anyway I posted this to show that you don't have to be over 16 to understand programming. But, a good age is probably 14 or older with experience with algebra and trigonometry topics like cosine, sine, tangent. Personally I think the only thing holding people back from making great games with DBPro, DBC, or Dark GDK, is creativity, and general design for games. If you want to make 3d games you should use Dark GDK, because it uses C++ and C++ is a great thing to get into. There's also tons of C++ tutorials I can't say the same for Dark GDK, but you could take the DBPro tutorials and convert them into Dark GDK since the functions in DBPro and Dark GDK are almost identical (usage wise). Although if you want to make 2d games I suggest flash or Game Maker. Game Maker would be a great program to use for a few months to learn the basics of game making and design (it also uses C++ syntax). The game maker community is very large too with tons of examples and open source games. So remember Dark GDK for 3d and Game Maker for 2d in my opinion. Good luck!

game programming is largely math based. like trig. which isn't learned until high school for most. which is why he suggests that you don't until you get to 16(generally sophomore year) granted this varys person to person(and school to school.(it also gets a lot into geometry)