Being capable of graphic design (and thusly I assume a bit of everything from vector to pixel work) you have a slight edge but you will mostly find people that are very jaded (not without reason either) and have met hundreds of people wanting to make their own game. Everybody has ideas (and ideas are worth precisely fuck all) and the "if I just had the time" type thing. If you are struggling with a particular aspect of making your game then that is an entirely different matter.
If you are looking to further your work skillset and make a game at the same time that focuses things a bit ("I want to make a game" is about as broad as "I want to write a book, I want to create a story, I want to make some music, I want to make a picture...." in that there are thousands of options for each). It varies a tad depending upon what particular field you find yourself in and I am not sure what the current and future hotness is in graphics world right now. Naturally web stuff features heavily in it and there is a lot you can do with games in web stuff (HTML5 and opengl are coming up, javascript interpreters allow for a lot, flash does very well for itself, java well java underpins much of android so take that as you will and that is before we get into the more esoteric stuff like ajax, server side scripting and node.js. Similarly if you do not know web stuff as far as basic CSS and maybe XML then go do that instead of this for the time being as being able to tart up a website is a far more saleable skill than being able to make a good version of pong.
Back on topic though I am not sure what to suggest here -- different programming languages do for different things and among programmers there is something of a truism in the phrase "you program very well in your first programming language" (after that you tend to use the constructs and style of the original language even if you are using a different one entirely). I have the little guide I wrote for ROM hacking uses but it is mainly for ROM hacking http://gbatemp.net/threads/rom-hacking-programming-languages-and-programming-tools-also-asm.324116/ and I am inclined to say you can not go wrong with python (it can program pretty much anything fairly well, it does not have too many oddities from an academic programming point of view, it does basic maths/data fiddling extremely well, it is the glue that holds most other programming languages together and it is on about every platform that matters with a lot of offshoots into other things).
My suggested book on it is http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.html though http://programming-motherfucker.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6B940F08B9773B9F are things I will also link and say have a look at those too.
On game makers.. they certainly have their uses and I will not begrudge the current set their existence but for me they are roughly equivalent to remixing music in that most people just shit all over something but you will occasionally get something that really works but is quite different or improves upon the original. In most cases those that can do that already know proper music creation though.
