The driving game Gran Turismo 5 has a development team of over 140 people, and they have been developing it for over 4 years. And these guys are world class programmers, designers, and a modelers. Games take a long long time to make and todays best games are made by people that are the top of there field in the world.
I made myself a text based RPG game in C++ with a friend. That is about as simple of a game as you can make. It was about 3000lines of code and took about 30minutes to complete the game. It was fun though, it had stat tracking, random mob encounters, and character stats like attack and defense, you could take several routes and find mystery box's and stuff.
It was very basic C++ though, i could do it with a friend and a bit of online help after reading a 350page C++ introduction that used programming applications to open in cmd prompt to teach you stuff and a couple of weeks familiarization.
There are easier ways though, by using game developing programs and stuff - but even these are not simple and involve some programming.
I don't think theres such thing as a one person software development team, since the very name is a oxymoron.
If the original posters first worry is the price of a software language, then I think he really doesn't understand the time it requires to produce a well made game on his own. Time = money. The best type of games single users can make are old school 8 bit type games that don't focus on graphics. A good example is Cave Story and even that took a long time to make. ( 5+ years ). You really need a lot of money and time to produce a AAA title as others have stated.
Game design is my dream job, but I hate game programming. As Sirlin showed, getting a good game design job pretty much requires a LOT of luck and skill.
I would like game design too i think, but i took the wrong qualifications to get into that area. Fortunately i enjoy programming when i understand it and know what i'm doing, i don't like it so much when i have no idea what to do and have no knowledge of the language. But i am pursuing a career in games programming. Doing Computing A-Levels which includes programming, then doing a BTEC National Diploma in Game Software Development at a local college, then after that doing a BSc Degree in Computer Games Programming, can't wait !