Speaking as a current indie & AAA gamedev who has built game-related curriculum for 3 schools (middle school through college)...

Because of the diversity of student types (artist vs game designer vs programmer, etc...) I recommend teaching EPIC's Unreal Development Kit (UDK).
The tools are mature and will immediately offer something to every role on a game project.
As for yourself, the UDK uses Unrealscript which is based on a C++/C# syntax.
There is a wealth of knowledge via books and internet tutorials. (e.g., Just typed in "UDK tutorial" in YouTube and received over 4500+ results!)
A nice bonus is that learning UDK is something the kids can actually put on a resume and/or help them get an internship.

Milage will vary with other pre-built gamedev environments.
Below are a few all-in-one-solutions that have editing features, based in a Windows environment:

App Game Kit (AGK) - http://www.appgamekit.com/
Construct2 - http://www.scirra.com/construct2
Game-Editor - http://game-editor.com/
Game Maker - http://www.yoyogames.com/make
Game Salad - http://gamesalad.com/
Scratch - http://scratch.mit.edu/

Good luck!

As a video game geek, a few recommendations:

This summer (2012) the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., will be hosting "The Art of Video Games".
http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/

In New Hampshire, there is one of the largest (if not the largest) arcade of classic video games: "Fun Spot"
http://www.funspotnh.com/

If thirsty and heading through NJ, there is always the semi-famous "Barcade":
http://barcadejerseycity.com/directions/

I'm both a professional and hobbyist game developer.

For Flash / Actionscript content, there is nothing better than the open source FlashDevelop.
It's only shortcoming is that it's built on tech that requires it to run on Windows based machines.

For C++ based content, nothing beats Visual Studio.
All the devkits and engines (Wii, Xbox360, PS3, DS, Unreal, etc...) as well as middleware are pretty much expecting devs to be using a Visual Studio base environment; at the very least for programming. (Debugging on PS3 is another story...)

If Mac or Linux had a great open source IDE, I'd jump to it.
The only mature option I know of is Eclipse, and in it current form its awful to use.
There isn't a single game developer I know who would touch it with a 10 foot pole.

So the IDEs are keeping me on Windows; or at the very least on Windows in a virtual machine.

That's one piece of the puzzle.
Two of a few examples that come to mind...

How did he get some of the best talent to work for Apple; especially in the late 90s when engineers knew it was nearing bankruptcy and the dot.com boom was paying top dollar for talent in a variety of interesting projects?

How did he get a good number of the consumer populous to think of Apple as being "THE" computer worth having; especially when it offered similar or only slightly better performance and features to what established big dogs (i.e., Dell, Compaq, and HP) were offering?

I grew up idolizing engineers like Woz & Carmack for their engineering skills; it wasn't until years of participating in group projects, and taking leadership positions on teams of 6 - 12 people have I realized how underrated amongst the technically proficient are the humanistic contributions that go into any project of a significant size. The larger the project, the more likely it will fail without stellar leadership. (e.g., Take a look at what Longhorn claimed and what it became when released as Windows Vista.)

I truly believe Steve cared about his products beyond the profit; he knew a great product, marketed the right way, would bring the profits. I wish more companies used this mentality.

I hope whatever qualities Steve possessed, that allowed Apple to be successful during his oversight, are able to persist amongst his successors.

I have tried it and have to disagree with you; a few devs on Civ5 were doing this so I rotated my 2nd monitor (a 16:10) to try it out and haven't gone back.

Great for FlashDevelop, VisualStudio (especially with Scott Hanselman'sfree RockScroll plug-in ).
Also not too shabby for certain web-sites with lists (e.g., Grooveshark)

I had a fastfood job one summer, needed money for car insurance since I blew it all on a 386dx-40.

The job was okay, but I wouldn't say "fun" and I was reprimanded for my one attempt to liven it up by making smiley faces in mustard. (Burger King rules: 3 rings ketchup, 2 rings mustard; no smiley faces!)

Working full-time in the games industry is much more fun, even with crunch. Besides paying better (well less than other IT jobs) It's more creative, and you know you're making the world a better place... or at least a more fun place.

You raise valid concerns but I don't feel biased as my livelihood is dependent on C++, Unrealscript, and Flash right now.

I agree, a web of standards (HTML5, CSS, Javascript) would be a world better than one of any proprietary technology. While I love Flash because of how I can quickly produce great results, I don't believe it's the end-all, be-all solution.

13 years of web work is impressive. I've been tinkering with HTML/CSS since 1996 on various sites and have had about 7 of my 10+ years doing it on/off for a salary. The biggest problem I had wasn't Flash, but was how IE5.0 - IE6.0 handled CSS and the DOM. Its funny as it was because of Microsoft's apathy in implementing standards correctly which drove me to do the bulk of my web development in Flash. (One can only spend so many hours playing with the box model to get margins & padding to align).

The tech (HTML5) solves half the problem, I don't believe we'll see wide adoption on the web until better tools exist. Flash is great for designers & artists to make content. (CS4 is lacking for programmers.) I hope a killer app does emerge, as it will mean either a more standards-friendly, media rich web; or at the minimum a push to Adobe to keep innovating and not rest on their past success.

I'm not an "amateur" or "hobbiest", if labeling myself a "professional" is arrogant in your eyes, so be it.

If sufficient "bloat" existed in Java, .NET, and Flash then they would not be adopted by the industries as a whole. Today a web search on why these languages are great alternatives to previously "standard" languages such as C / C++, will turn up many articles.

The fact is that if C / C++ was a superior language for all situations, other languages would be left to fall into obscurity. But instead we see a majority of the Game Industry use script languages (lua, python, unrealscript, etc...) for game logic, Flash for UI (over 60% are using a single vendor's implementation), and the IT industry as a whole sink billions into .NET / Java applications.

The last non-game, full-time job I had involved me helping a team to port an enterprise-level C++ application to .NET. The .NET version was a huge success, more robust, easier to maintain, and suffered no "bloat". It was a huge improvement over the C/C++ in terms of speed and memory usage because of how easy it was to implement multi-threading and tie into the system API via .NET (instead of direct Win32 access). Given x10 the amount of time I'm sure the C++ could be made to be faster, maybe more memory efficient too, but then given x100 the amount of time I'm sure we could trump the bloat of C++ (those nasty vtables, etc...) by writing it in 8088 assembly. (The reality was we would all be out of a job if we had spent more than a few months past the deadline.)

So I gladly welcome the "bloat" that comes with Java, .NET, and Flash. In the end it will allow for feature rich, fast executing, and memory friendly programs to be written in a fraction of the time. And when I am given the time & need to write to the metal, I'll gladly use C++; the right tool for the right job.

From the amount of open source applications actively being developed in these languages, it appears I'm not alone on my views.

"Claim"? Yes, I suppose it would have been nice if I backed up asserting that title with some examples.

Anytime an anonymous coward makes a sweeping generalization about me because of a keyword of phrase was used in my post, I remember at one time I was a student who thought he was the shit and knew better than most people posting on Slashdot (well okay, BBSes) with 10+ years experience as a "professional" developer.

Personal issues aside...

Flash is sufficiently fast for many types of development, including iPhone apps, AAA game UI, web games, twitter clients, and much more. This is coming from the same "professional" whose been using a language that many consider "fast" (C++) over 15 years. Heck I even know 8088 assembly; you want to see "buggy" try writing even the simplest of games in pure assembler.

The biggest problem I see with Flash being "slow" is the same problem C, C++, and all other languages has; poorly educated developers. A fantastic development environment doesn't stop a programmer from throwing in logic that brings the (virtual) machine to a halt. There is no other language/environment that can offer such a rich, consistent environment across a variety of platforms. Many are striving to beat Flash (e.g., Unity, Silverlight, etc...) but none have yet to meet all the features Flash provides.

Could Flash be better? ...sure.

But until a better cross-platform environment comes into existence, which can give me all of the features Flash / Actionscript 3 does, I'll stick to Flash. Many others in my industry feel the same way, and this is why it's sad Apple is playing hardball with Adobe; it puts the burden on Adobe to allocate developers for targeting Objective-C when they could instead be fixing bugs, optimizing the fvm, and adding new tools or features.

For more "funny" comments from industry experts, pick up the latest issue of "Game Developer" magazine which happens to have a great article on the issues of programming touch-screen devices. ( http://gdmag.com/ ) A few concrete examples are given regarding the iPhone.

This entire story is FUD; I took the bite though...

I'm a user interface lead at a game studio which is leveraging a Flash-based solution that could target consoles. I already did this once before on CnC3:Kane's Wrath (a title with PC and 360 SKUs), and have done contract work creating a Flash Lite application for the Sony Mylo 2 (touch screen.) Besides all this I also teach Introduction to Interactive Media at a local college which has a successful curriculum based around Flash, and yet touches on aspects of touch-devices and alternate input (non-browser) environments.

All that said about my qualifications I make this statement:
Flash works in it's existing form on these devices.

Its my professional opinion that it would work fine on an iPad or iPhone and the non-technical agenda Apple has is what's preventing it from manifesting itself on those platforms.

From the screen shots, the graphics look more realistic than previous versions.

As for real life; I tend to only move forward with an occasional 0.5 second strafe to avoid an obstacle. But seriously, (good) games are about mechanics that introduce "fun"; simulations are about modeling life.

If I was to teach beginning programming to a child or someone who does not know if they want to commit to the field, I would teach programming in Flash.

While the Flash IDE's debugging and scripting area is not suited for an experienced programmer, it does a great job of letting someone quickly wire up visual elements for that instant feedback & gratification. Core programming concepts such as variables, loops, and functions are quick to learn. For those who want to continue AS3 has a long road of concepts going into bit fields, OO, shaders, etc...

There is a tremendous amount of books on programming in Flash / Actionscript 3; as well as great web sources in the forms of blogs and communities such as:
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=6
http://wonderfl.net/
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/

This is coming from someone who has created and taught curriculum in Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ back in the 90's for 11-15 year olds, and these days I am an adjunct professor teaching Flash & Actionscript3 to artists (non-programmers).

I work in the AAA game space... even though I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro, with an iMac to my left and an (old) MacMini hooked up to my TV in front of me, there is not a large enough market share for most AAA studios to support the time/effort for a native port. Those that do so, do it out of the goodness of their heart. (Thank you 2dBoy for "World Of Goo")

I didn't believe this myself until someone told me to look up the #s and a few short Googles later showed the sad truth. I could have sworn they were wrong, as half of the computers used by attendees at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) the past 2 years have been Mac based, but 3.36% is small ( SOURCE http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/22/mac-market-share-in-q1-2009-3-36-percent-apple-earnings-strong.aspx )

I am aware of these tools outside of the Flash IDE; please see my response to AppleOSuX for details.