James Silva has won recognition from Microsoft, has co-authored books on XNA game development. He's another kid that in the middle of no where upstate NY that did a great job, made a good product and is doing well for himself.
Also if you just look for indie game developers -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_game_developers alot of these games appear on STEAM (steampowered.com) and are distributed to many customers successfully for Win/Mac/Linux.
In fact most game developers started out as mod teams. Back in the Quake days, Team Fortress was made, and now the same people that made that made TF2. Left 4 Dead started out as a mod for HL2, and turned into a full fledged game on the OrangeBox engine.
Last thing that comes to mind is -> "http://sandboxgamemaker.com/ which is another production that has been very successful. My friend who's on the dev team has had stories come back from teachers in Europe and California that use this software with kids, and has helped them learn and find passion in their work.
If it pleases the court, I'd like to end with this. If you wish for me, I ask for a brief recess to prepare material. :-)