I agree to a large extent. In fact, it’s one of the problematic things about modern game development as a creative field in my view. The skill-set required is so broad and time intensive that a premium title is virtually inconceivable without a significant team of diversely skilled people, all of whom need to be paid – perhaps all pulling in slightly different directions etc. I imagine that it’s very easy for a project to lose focus and compromise its original ambitions, and it results in a tendency toward risk aversion and against originality. In other fields, the very best work tends to be a result of a singular, determined vision, so in lieu of a polymath of genius with an inexplicable amount of time on his or her hands...
I actually disagree, at least as far as the requirement of a broad skill set - this is more a by-product of the "lean-manufacturing" mentality. Granted, from a pure cost-analysis perspective, it is far less expensive for one person to do 3 or 4 or 5 different jobs. However, that old saying "Jack of all trades, master of none" holds even more true here. Let's take something fairly basic - the design, animation and skinning of a model. A good model designer is going to make an exceptionally good model. A good animator is going to be able to take that model and animate it, and a good skin designer is going to apply the textures in such a manner as to make the final asset look its best.
Not every modeler is an animator. Not every animator is a skin artist, and not every skin artist can manage to model a believable cube. But far too many studios have modelers animating and skinning models regularly, all in the name of saving money. Meanwhile, there is another part of that equation that is being missed - that of time.
If a single modeler is also animating and skinning, the total time to produce a finished asset is greatly increased. This also costs money, which in turn also slows production, which in turn can also cost money. In the very end, if you're extremely lucky, you wind up breaking even on the cost savings, and are only a few weeks behind schedule. Whereas a more proper team allows each person to focus on the area where they are most skilled - modelers making models, animators animating and skinner skinning. Production deadlines are met, and the final, finished product is that much better.
Now this isn't to say that there aren't modelers who can't also animate their models - there are. There are also modeler-animators who can skin their models as well, and can do all these tasks equally as well as any specialist - I know a few. But doing all this still takes time, many times far more time than having a proper team collaborate.
The same holds true on the programming side of things, database management, infrastructure - you name it. Allowing people the opportunity to focus their skills gets more done in less time and with better results - nearly always. Of course, too many people can be an issue as well, and I've watched this first hand when it comes to programmers - one programmer does things one way, another does them a little differently, the third does something completely different, and the three spend more time arguing over which is the "right" way to do things, or they end up changing what the other has done, and in the end, nothing gets done.
Finding that perfect balance, tuning a team like a fine instrument, and keeping everyone on track.. now that's the occupation of a project manager, and like the art teams and programming teams, project managers also need to be able to focus on what they're doing - not coordinating events, making live-streams, or meddling in other areas of production - again, a very common practice stemming from that "lean manufacturing" mindset.
It's a real mess of things we've made for ourselves - and it's also one of the things that often make small indi projects so spectacular. Small teams, less pressure, people able to do what they do best and collaborate on the things they're not as strong at doing, without someone calculating the pennies-per-second every bit of minutiae is costing.
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