I am lucky in that I got to work with Dan/Dannie Bunten from Ozark Softscape. I worked at a computer store here in Little Rock, and got to beta test most of thier games.
Finally got to work on Global Conquest with them. Great time. And actually have my name on a published game.
Really want to get back in the business, but I make to much money now to jump. So just trying to keep up and work on a game just for me and my kids in my spare time. If it turns out okay, maybe self publish. The problem is it is hard to be a jack of all trades today in the game world. Between design, art, models, and code it takes a lot of time.
I hope to use what I learned from Dan and develop games like he did. M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, and even Global Conquest were all pretty non-violant games, and most of them made you play with others.
If you want a simple and inexpensive game development tool, look at Gamestudio (
http://www.conitec.net/a4info ) It is a pretty good engine, the basic version is only $49 and it is royalty free.