First game that was actually 'completed' for me was a little Myst fangame called 'Sehv T'devokan' (age of peace, translated from the fictional D'ni language) in 2004. That was a small project made with Adventure Maker and it no longer runs on recent versions of Windows. (http://www.mystfanart.org)
I came fairly close to making a game of my own design based on a story of my own, Traveler's Enigma, in the same engine (2005-2010) - seen on www.triumphantartists.com along with teasers of many other things - but abandoned the project once it was clear that AM and in particular the advanced features of it like panoramas, were broken on anything newer than Windows XP and that the developer of the toolset was no longer actively updating the software.
During the 2000s I was also in college, so did a lot of stuff related to class coursework, mainly video and handcrafted studio art stuff, not game development. My video work though dated back earlier, to 2001, as well as my VFX work, and I was doing a wide range of things that the video department teachers didn't, themselves, understand how to do. One classic memory was in a sculpture class - we were basically assigned to make a 'scene' or miniature diorama in three weeks and I made a three minute stopmotion comedy video called 'Tinyville Disaster' in which a town of stop-motion clay people are terrorized by a normal full sized human who stomps around their city Godzilla-style. The video was played to the class several times and everybody was blown away by how much more I did than what was technically assigned. That was one of many similar situations, though.
My archive of personal video projects is rather pathological, over 7 hours of material, over $6000 in production expenses, and well over 1800 vfx shots. Most of that stuff is still to this day, not available or posted online due to years of bad legal decisions. (A bunch of people never signed talent release forms, paper or digital)
I ended up graduating from University of Houston with a GPA of 3.67, Phi Kappa Phi honors, major in Media Production, minor in Studio Art.
I also did some stuff in GameSalad including a little web minigame called 'Vivid Minigolf' seen on www.VividMinigolf.com, but the arbitrary 10mb filesize upper limit of the HTML5 output damaged it badly.
I also made an Android APK (Prodigal, on GalileeGames.com) with the Corona SDK, or at least the graphics and SFX. My dad was the designer and coder on this and I assisted. It came at a time when I was sort of starting to dismiss religion as nonsense and I felt a little weird making a 'faith based' game that did not reflect my own emerging view of the world.
There were other projects - I helped with some stuff with the ineffectively managed but well intentioned 'nonPareil Institute' for about a year after that. I was the only person there who understood how to use Adobe AfterEffects so that was some of what I did, making iterations of a game trailer for 'Lightwire' and organizing a course on the topic of Adobe AE.
Yes, in answer to he question about how I was on the nP crew, yes, I have autism. I also struggle with OCD and clinical depression.
After it became clear I was not going to be a paid staffer ever at nP, I left, and proceeded to scrape together project funding very slowly through a mix of freelancing and online sales. I have shops on Etsy and eBay, along with my space here on itch on http://matthornb.itch.io - I have 387 ratings, 100% positive, on my eBay account and two good reviews on Etsy, but frustratingly none of my now 20-odd customers has yet rated my work on itch and it has kept my asset packs from ever taking off. (so far)
I have been stuck doing a ton of microtasks to keep things afloat. I do a lot of mTurk tasks and online audio transcription at $3/hr or so. It is mind-numbing and it would be nice if someone here would hire me at a similar pay rate to make 3d or graphics content for them. Don't know if that will realistically ever work out though.
Still hoping something elsewhere will turn out well. Something creative. We'll see. I know mental illness is a red flag to conventional employers but I am fairly bright and creative, and I am able to work hard, and I am convinced that sooner or later I will make something work out.
I am slowly wrapping up work on an indie game called 'Miniature Multiverse' www.miniaturemultiverse.com and intend to launch on Itch.IO and Steam by the end of 2020.
We'll see how that goes. 16 years after my first game I might actually have my first modest success as a game developer here. Even if it flops, I will continue pushing forward. I do have a number of other unfinished projects that can be wrapped up afterwards even if the first attempt fails. I will keep trying until something works.
(Incidentally, there are a bunch of my things bundled together - game assets - on sale at 90% off right now. $0.89 for five asset packs on itch.io, an Easter sale still active for the next 12 hours roughly): https://itch.io/s/28359/good-friday-through-easter-sale - that includes dozens of 3d assets, over a thousand texture maps, over a hundred video effects elements. For under a dollar.