I think the problem is so much game development relies on proprietary game engines and middleware that at this time open source development isn't likely to take off. The only major open source game engine I'm aware of is Renpy and that's mainly for visual novels.
There's plenty of decent beginning of tools and a fairly promising dev suite of
https://godotengine.org/ but no that's not really the problem in my opinion and experience. Despite a million attempts at homebrew game engines from enthusiasts, it's at least telling that the only impactful results come from an entire decades of work from immensely well resourced companies filled with great talent to even produce decent engines (which we all hate regardless). There's also nothing really stopping anyone from making an open source project based on Unity or Unreal, just make a project and a public repository.
As for the OP, it's filled with bad takes (but I don't blame you and I think at lot of it comes from a good place even if naive), but lemme tackle a few:
There are very active communities in the development of free and open source software in the most diverse areas. From office suites to scientific applications. Now, in terms of big game projects, I don't see organization and dedication on the same level. At the level of producing games we call AAA.
The creative part of making games puts a big, big challenge on it, and then when you combine it with the fact that game productions at the level we call AAA range from 20-200 millions of dollars worth of working hours, it's not really a wonder. Most people who are in for that kind of dedication and time required (and the necessary skills), would rather make a company and set out on their own while actually trying to make a living. In fact, having been part of startups I don't see a lot of people who would have that kind of time available and be able to put it in without the compensation, but instead they go and ahead and make their own companies. However, requires often raising money so you will always be dealing with some factors out of your immediate control.
When we observe large communities of discussion about games, such as ResetERA, Reddit and others, the number of people who express their understanding of design, music, art and technology is huge. Any technical problem, be it in terms of frames, resolution and physics is quickly pointed out. Any level design or game pacing problem is also underlined at maximum speed. And developers are often accused of negligence or incompetence for these mistakes. How often do modders not solve problems that are left by developers?
I must be very clear on this, there's a huge difference between observing the end result and the journey there. Games don't ship when they are ready, games ship when you run out of time and money. Everyone in the development team is always painfully aware of what could be better, but the constraints put on the vast majority of projects are immense.
Secondly, while there are absolutely great people at analyzing results (shoutout to Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit), that has a very little to do with what it takes to get there. Just because you can say something doesn't work out well after 5 years of work to get things running, that doesn't mean you know how to make a great game from nothing.
And I'm not saying the teams always get the talent they need either, because they rarely do or mistakes aren't made all the time. There's a shortage of experience people in the industry, so many games have open positions until the day the ship, because the companies just can't fill the roles, so someone with not necessarily the most skills for the job has to still do things to ship the game.
www.resetera.com
