Not to discourage you from learning to program but, if you already have an abundance of written material, why are you not looking at doing a book or a comic or a tabletop game of some kind instead? Something that doesn't require years to learn a technical skill before you're able to introduce your vision to the public. If you do have a passion for programming and you learn enough to begin making games, consider that if you've been writing and publishing all this time you would have all this IP at your disposal that has already been exposed to the public and have a measured response for.

Several reasons. I find that video games are a great storytelling medium since you get to interact the the characters and world. The Last of Us had me care more about the characters than any comic, book, or movie did. Plus, I figured a game would have a bigger audience. I don't really care about the money, I just want to share my universe. The best book publishers usually require giving away some of the rights to the ip. I did plan on self publishing a book series that had a shared universe with the game. I seriously considered comics but a video game would make the world that much more believable in my opinion since it would be in motion and had actual sound and emotional expressions. I eventually plan on starting a game/animation studio. I find that animation shouldn't just be for young audiences.

So my question is this: How can I make my dream game a reality? I am just your average joe. I have always imagined my story as a very long single player narrative game played in 3rd person.

Coming at this from a designer's perspective, the scale & scope of your game sounds very expansive, something I fear would take you a number of years to complete on your own.

Take Call of Duty for example whereby a team of roughly 100 developers, artists, sound engineers and designers can make the latest COD title by using the same assets (the objects in a level, from a chair to an overturned truck) will need to be created in a 3D modelling program before being imported into your game engine.

As you said yourself, you are just starting out in Games Development. I would highly recommend starting small and working up to your dream game. My first game when I started consisted of rolling a ball around a 3D field. Simple but my God was it difficult to code - which brings me onto my next point...

What language are you intending to use for your game? C++? C#? Java? Most games without using some level of coding frankly aren't that good. Even using a pre-built engine like Unity or Unreal will eventually get you to start coding.

Coming from my own experience I would, as mentioned above, start small & eventually progress up to building your dream game...and get on the coding wagon as soon as you can. It will help you out in the long run :)

Not to discourage you from learning to program but, if you already have an abundance of written material, why are you not looking at doing a book or a comic or a tabletop game of some kind instead? Something that doesn't require years to learn a technical skill before you're able to introduce your vision to the public. If you do have a passion for programming and you learn enough to begin making games, consider that if you've been writing and publishing all this time you would have all this IP at your disposal that has already been exposed to the public and have a measured response for.

Several reasons. I find that video games are a great storytelling medium since you get to interact the the characters and world. The Last of Us had me care more about the characters than any comic, book, or movie did. Plus, I figured a game would have a bigger audience. I don't really care about the money, I just want to share my universe. The best book publishers usually require giving away some of the rights to the ip. I did plan on self publishing a book series that had a shared universe with the game. I seriously considered comics but a video game would make the world that much more believable in my opinion since it would be in motion and had actual sound and emotional expressions. I eventually plan on starting a game/animation studio. I find that animation shouldn't just be for young audiences.

It sounds like you have some enthusiasm for the universe you've created. Perfect, don't loose that. Do you have the same enthusiasm for learning to program?

Consider that while the trade off with publishing a book is giving away some of the rights to the IP, the trade off for creating a game is a significant investment in time, money, and effort that you may or may not enjoy. And there's no guarantee that either yourself or other developers will be able to deliver your vision (there's always some feature that doesn't go quite as planned).

The allure of building a universe from the dust of electrons and breathing life into it is powerful. And as one might expect, looking at it from that perspective, it's not easy or fast. Good luck.

If there's one thing I've learned from game development it's never get too attached to a story, mechanic, or idea in general. For your game to reach its full potential you will have to iterate and improve and odds are the end product will barely resemble what you started with. However I assure you that it is all for the better. You mentioned that you are just beginning to get into game development and are learning programming. That's a good start. Learning the technical skills required is a step many people try to get around and it never goes well. As a matter of fact I tried picking up the technical skills and knowledge of how to design a game while simultaneously designing a game and ended up accomplishing neither. That experience taught me several valuable lessons though. For one never get ahead of yourself. Take things one step at a time. Anyways good luck with your game and your budding career in game development! I look forward to seeing you around in the forums.