The problem is that all those "game-maker" programs are extremely limited in what you can do. Sure if they have a "shoot-em-up" option, you make a shoot-em-up. You might be able to tweak a varible or two (points scored, speed, etc.) but in general all you'll endup with is a very poor shoot-em-up like 7000 others but with different graphics. The *second* that you want to do something even slightly different (e.g. change the way the player's controls handle, etc.) and you're into programming.
3D Construction Kit was, precisely, that. A construction kit. You couldn't really do much at all, from a "game" point of view. It was revolutionary because it was "3D", not because it let you make games. Even the games "made using" or "based on" 3DCK were nothing more than graphical tweaks of existing games. It's always been the same. If memory serves (and Wikipedia backs me up here), 3DCK had a programming language in it to do that "fancy stuff". Hell, that program had to come with a videotape instruction manual it was so "simple".
And programming isn't some mystic art. With the right language and the right enthusiasm/teacher it takes minutes to get up and running. I proved this the other day - I had a work experience student in my office for two weeks (15 years old, never seen DOS, didn't know what a command line was or that it even existed, never written a line of code in his life, played on XBox's all day long). One day, we learned BASIC (purely out of interest because he was asking about old games, etc.) using QBASIC. The next day, he'd come in with a game he'd written off his own back. It's really not even as difficult as that, even. My friends in secondary school were using AMOS on the Amiga to do all sorts of things when they were 15/16... if they could do it then, you can learn in it minutes if you're dedicated.
If programming *really* isn't your thing, then you should really team up with someone for whom it is. It's hard to program at all if you're not enthustiastic for it (even programmers will tell you this - there's a certain "mood" you have to be in) and trying to juggle graphics, ideas and programming is very, very difficult (but nowhere near impossible).
I've heard good things about DarkBASIC but you are still in the realm of programming. Anything more abstract than that tends to be extremely unpopular, weird or just plain useless.
