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Notes -
Unfortunately, this sort of problem seems present even for incredibly small projects, even separated from conventional ideological frustrations. The NeosVR Saga had a lot of 'developers', but they overwhelming majority were only not volunteers because they were paid in monopoly money; the real crux was a battle between the two guys at the heart of the project. And I've seen non-game business battles with a half-dozen employees, generally split between the Growth Uber Allies and the internal designers.
It's not even necessarily the business guys running circles around them -- even when they take really simple approaches, or have the right position (after all, 'artist goes so far up their ass you don't have a sellable product before you run out of burn' is a failure mode that happens often!) -- so much that there's a lot of tools each side has for a really phyrric victory, really easily.
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