Okay, you make some good points, but I am not sure your conclusions are solid.
First, as a little Intro into why I can relate 100% to your current situation: I am a business programmer who is doing game dev as a very time consuming hobby... I switched to working 80% especially to get more time to work on this hobby. I get a good salary, so I was able to take the pay cut without loosing too much pocket money, so to speak.
Now, I am entering the 6th year of working on my game dev skills as a hobbyist, and the 4th year of working 80%... I think I learned a lot, but I am still far from the skillset of the fulltime pros. In my defence, I DID try to learn everything myself (programming, 3D modelling, 2D Graphics, Sound design), but seeing how I did bring some skills in both programming and arts to the table, it is safe to say you can expect many years of learning, not months, to be able to create anything professional in game dev, more so if you are only working part time (or moonlighting) on it.
So make that 6 years instead of 12 months solid training for solid skills if you aim too high with your expectations!
Then hiring a team: this might sound lilke a good idea, no need to get training and all, just start. You are wrong on many fronts if you don't bring the needed cash AND expierience to the table. Here my thoughts on it:
1) a single dev paid full time is expensive! Here in switzerland such a dev would expect 70k$+ a year. I understand that in the US salarys are MUCH lower, but 40-50k$ a year would be minimum you could go with. That makes a team of even 2 about 100k$ per year, without the additional expenses for hardware, software, and office space.
Can you go cheaper with inexpierienced devs? Yes of course... but the quality of their work will be just as much lower as the pay they expect... you do get what you pay for.
2) Working with freelancers might be a better choice... but you will pay more now per finished piece to cover their overhead expenses. Additionally, you need to find freelancers who a) are free for work, b) can do the work in the time and quality and style you expect it to be done, c) are ready to work for a completly inexpierienced client (which most likely will not know what he wants, wills most probably not be happy with what he gets, and might not have the needed funds to make this a longtime contract).
Again, you get what you pay for here.
3) Somebody still needs to to the management part, marketing, design, and so on. If you are not already an expierienced Project Lead / Team lead, most probably you also need to learn to fill this role. Outsourcing this might be possible, but is even harder to pull off than the others.
Personally, I would do the following:
1) get a rudimentary skillset myself. Either programming, or art. See that you can pull off something (a baisc game prototype with placeholder art, or awesome concept drawings) that you can use to hook other people to your project. Make no mistake, that is not exactly easy as most hobbysts most probably are busy with their own ideas. So yes, you need to provide a really good idea to have a slim chance to get others onboard, and prove that you can follow through with your idea by laying the ground work, be it programming or art, yourself.
If you cannot spare the free time or have the patience to teach you a basic game dev skill, get into project management, and see how you can amass the needed funds to outsource everything.
2) Make a VERY good plan what exactly you need. Every asset produced and not needed in the final game might cost you thousands of $ because of all the work involved, so plan wisely. Make compromises wherever you can. Do you really need multiplayer? Does the game really need to be 3D? Do you really need animated characters in the game?
On the other hand, plan for unplanned expenses. Games can go way oer budget quickly because the basic game design might prove to be just not fun, and a complete redesign late in the development might be needed to salvage the project.
If you happen to be rich, or happen to find an investor that believes enough in your vision to give you the big bucks, creating your own team or hiring freelancers can be a good idea. You still need an expierienced project lead, somebody that needs to make tough art, technological and most of all business decisions. If you do not have this skillset and do not want to learn to fill this role, add another team member (or pay one of your team members more to additionally fill this role).
If cannot spare the 100k$+ a year for even a team of 2 inexpieirenced devs, just drop the idea.
On your idea of "learning from the pros while they create my game":
Forget that.
1) For one, to even basically understand half of what they are doing, you need an extremly deep understanding of game development yourself. Sit next to a 3D Modeller for an hour and try to understand how he creates his models. Even if he shares all his knowledge, chances are a) UV Mapping means nothing to you, b) You cannot tell the difference between faces, edge and vertices, c) how exactly face and vertex normals are different, and why that matter is beyond you.... I could go on for hours, but I think I made my point.
2) Professionals know what they are worth. And they know their knowledge is what makes them worth so much. You will always find pros quite willing to give novices advices and write tutorials for free, but on the other hand, they could sell this knowledge for real money in a book...
3) Your guys would be slowed down in their progress when you sit next to them... not only because they had to literally explain everything to you, but also because having somebody stare over your shoulder while you work is not really the relaxing atmosphere that makes you work faster.
4) Do you want to hire poeple that are good at creating stuff, or at teaching stuff? Not many people are good at both.
If you want to learn game dev, you should do that before paying others to make your game, and with a good tutorial or book. This way you would have a better idea how to approach your future project, and no matter if you happen to work yourself on the project or not, you will be able to better communicate to the guys building your game.
Dude, it is your money and time. Still, I strongly advise you to first learn a little bit more about game development before you start planning your project, and come up with a very solid plan before you even think about hiring people or doing outsourcing.
Really, at your current stage you should only think about prototyping, or even better learning the needed skills to create a prototype. To come back ontopic, this prototype can be built with stock art or even placeholder art (colored cubes and spheres) for that matter.
You are trying to run before you can even crawl.
I will not even try to go into the "X is better than Y" land you entered with your last paragraph. Having dabbled in both 2D Graphics and 3D modelling, I wouldn't want to make a call at what is more challenging to do.
Does 2D Art need more in traditional art skill because of the whole "3D projection unto a 2D medium", and if you go to analog paper drawing (which is something even a lot of the pros are not doing anymore), the whole "no unlimited undos for you" stuff? Yes, I guess so....
But on the other hand, most 3D Muggles cannot appreciate the incredible amount of steps, different texture maps, and sheer time it takes to create a more complex 3D model. Not everything can created with a 3DS Max script, or can be 'shopped together in minutes! And even if, if you need to 'shop 100 input maps, that is still a lot of time!
In the end, it is 2 different skillsets, neither of which needs less skill or creativity to create something in.
