As a member of one of those dedicated teams that created games that I hope you tried or liked, I can explain that the industry is very different now from a technical and artistic perspective. In those days roles were being invented and were often blurred. Technology was almost always created from scratch. Tools for art and level building were often created from scratch. Even if you wanted to build your own engine, the technology to share code and art is so advanced you would be foolish not to take advantage of it. Sharing is just much easier now.

People are more specialized and interchangeable. Outsourcing the work to where it can be done best for the best price makes sense. We would have done it that way in the '90s, if it would have worked. Now it does.