i think you idea is about indie developers. in an indie team as you dont have enough budget, even you have a great idea, you have to program and prototype it on your own, so in that situation programing is most critical part.
I totally disagree, and as you can tell from my above post, my experience comes primarily from within the industry (I'm still a long way to becoming a full-fledged indie!).
which names are known with name of call of duty: west, zampella, dave anthony and... non of them were programers
Ah, but you touch on a very sensitive point. Which of them were 'known' doesn't meant they did all of the work. For example, you always know the frontman of any group (heck, I'm sure you know who your president/prime minister/etc. is, but could you name every minister? or vice-minister? Well, believe it or not, they're the ones doing a lot of the work, and the top dog only gives a general direction.
what you say is like peter jackson is not important until you dont have visual effects team.
Interesting you should jump straight to movies? The relationship is definitely not the same. That being said, Peter Jackson is the frontman, once again, and he sure as hell had a great run from his VFX team but more importantly his cast and costumes dept. Then again, I never said he was NOT important. I said that, he alone, couldn't have made the movie, or else, it would've been with a cheap handycam and 3 buddies in a basement and paid them with some of his booze. No one would've remembered that movie, at least, not positively.
john carmack and tim sweeny but that is for algorithms, engines and...
and basically allowing 3D games to exist at all? That's a pretty big achievement right there. Looking back at the DOOM days, I recommend you watch the classic post-mortem on it from the GDC vault. There were a lot of things created then that still exist to this day and are assumed by Game Directors.
That being said, I did not imply the Game Directors were worthless, but as any half-decent Game Director would tell you himself, they can't do the work on their own, they are just there to inspire the road to take. Being decision makers, they do have a say in what will be, but ultimately, if left alone, they can't do anything (unlike a programmer).
For reference: I'm a producer in the video game industry and have been for several years now. On smaller scope titles where a Game Director is not required (the majority of games that get released yearly) the Producer pretty much does both jobs, so I've been in these shoes a number of times now. When I say that Game Directors couldn't do it without people, I mean it: I couldn't do it without people! And mind you, I actually know how to code ;)