While these guys are suggesting more low level solutions, I'll show you your higher level options =P

If you want to use a C family language, you could always develop with C# and XNA (Microsoft's development platform that will make your game compatible with both PC and Xbox). C# tends to be much nicer to the starting developer with all the nice things like a expansive library, garbage collection, being mostly thread safe and stuff....

The platform I use the majority of the time is flash. You can pick up the trial from the adobe website if you want to try it. The language is quite newcomer friendly (as far as languages go) and the distributive ability of the finished product is what makes me use it.

Both those solutions are not nearly as efficient or powerful as C/C++ though, and only flash CS4 has hardware support for 3D. It really depends on what you want to make.