Learn

Educational links are here for those interested in learning about the game and entertainment industries, with some other stuff thrown in there too ;)

Applications & Games - Development & Design

Casual Games Association and Casual Connect Essential articles and videos for everyone wanting into the game industry, and those currently in it!

GDC Vault View some great sessions and talks from various Game Development Conferences!

Game Accessibility Guidelines Everyone interested in developing anything should review the content here, for how to help make your creations easier to use for those with disabilities or other impairments.

MOD DB
An excellent resource for sharing and checking out mods and indie games. Also see INDIE DB too.

Gamasutra

Tom Sloper's School-A-Rama

David Perry's Game Dev Page

Gamedev.net
Old school into modern day game development resources.

Video Game Name Generator
Just for fun, check it out! Great tool for game jam inspiration, or for making quick demos to try something out.

Gamedev on Stack Exchange
If you are looking for some more advanced coding resources, this is a good place to investigate.

Free or Low Cost Education Options

Code Academy Learn to start coding/programming for free.

Code.org Every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn to code.

Over API Beginning to advanced programming cheatsheets for multiple programming languages and scripting languages.

MIT's Open Courseware Science, Game Design, Mathematics and more!

Khan Academy Science, Economics, Computer Science, Mathematics and more!

Coursera Science,Music, Film, Biology & Life Sciences, Law, Business & Management, Medicine, Computer Science, Mathematics and more!

Game Institute Learn game engine programming, math, graphics programming, art & animation, development with Unity.

Virtual Training Company Video courses in software training, business, graphics, animation, programming, CAD, WebDev, and more!

The Best Creative Outlets & Communities

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's HitRecord.org Submit and share your photos, art, poems, music, voices, and videos with other creative people! Collaborate and remix others' creations too.

Kevin Spacey's TriggerStreet Review and submit screenplays and shorts with fellow writers, directors, etc!

Newgrounds Review and submit your own Flash animations, Flash games, HTML5 games/apps, artwork, music, & voice overs while making a tiny bit of money with advertising. One of the oldest popular websites on the internet, about as old as IMDB.com. The creativity coming from here sometimes may scare you, but should give you hope for humanity. You may not make much money with indie/student titles, but you usually will get better views, with helpful comments and ratings.

Kongregate Review and submit your own Flash and HTML5 games/apps, and earn some money with advertising. This community is harsher toward indie/student games on the views/reviews/ratings/comments, so do not expect many views if your game does not stand out. If you do get a hit game though, it can pay decent, especially if it is exclusive to Kongregate.

Development & Creation Tools

Most of these are for Windows based computers
Clickteam - Fusion 2.5
Build your own Flash, iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), Android (Tablets & Phones) & Windows native apps/games with their easy "click & create" method! (Clickteam has one of the most helpful communities for over 20 years in education, with no programming skills needed to make advanced or simple apps!)

Some amazing indie games made Fusion:

Here are 167 games made with Clickteam's Fusion!

Spriter Pro
2d Animation is super easy with Brash Monkey's Spriter Pro. Combined with the lip sync tool Papagayo
, making cartoons, sprite sheets, and talking characters is straight forward for your games and animation projects.

Inkscape - Open Source vector graphics editor Capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Free and legal way to turn your art and images into vector graphics for Flash/AIR or printing high quality, high resolution or PPI/DPI.

3dRad - As easy to make 3d games as it is to use Clickteam's tools! Really easy 3d game creation on Windows computers. No longer supported, but super easy to help anyone get started with 3d game creation, and understanding 3d models, textures, and placement with interactions in a 3d world. DISCONTINUED but, a community keeps it going here: 3dRad Archive Community

The Big List of Royalty Free Graphics Links to all kinds of 2d and 3d graphics to help you build your demos and learn with. Check out the rest of the website for great resources too!

Blender - An open source 3d creation and animation toolset that has been updated and developed since 1995. It has vast community support and many plugins/add-ons for it that help it easily rival current (expensive) commercial software.

Sculptris - Easy to use 3d organic modeling By the makers of Z Brush :)

MT Paint - Easily create pixel art Want to make retro/old school pixelated games with an 8bit or 16bit look? This open source tool will help you get started!

CB Model Pro - Easy 3d sculpting & modeling, even children can use it! DISCONTINUED. Be careful where you try to download it.

Art Rage - Easy to use for comic artists especially! Many professional comic artists use this tool.

Pencil - A drawing and hand drawn animation tool Great for sketching and traditional animation that is open source.

Terragen - Easy to use environment generation Create terrains and height field maps with ease.

Texture Maker - Easily make textures w/tons of effects

Audacity - Open source sound editing and recording software If you desire to export to .mp3, you will need to get the LAME MP3 encoder. Great for .wav file sound effect editing!

sfxr - Free retro sound effect generator and editor This is equally good for retro/old school games and for modern games too!

Unreal Engine Once you learn how to program well, the Unreal Engine is quite remarkable with one of the best 3d commercial engines on Earth.

Construct 2 A visually based, easy to use program to make your own apps and games with in HTML5 for multiple platforms.

Card & Board Game Creation & Other Inventing Resources

The Game Crafter Design, sell, & buy indie card and boardgames. Buy various parts to prototype with, or to fully make your own game. Upload your digital art assets, and start selling at no cost!

Designer Resources on Indie Conquest A great list or resources to point you in many directions, depending on when, where, and HOW you want to create & publish your games.

The United States Patent & Trademark website for Inventors Primarily for creators in the USA, but many links to review and learn from, that can help you understand the process from taking your creation from idea to tangible product to license or sell.