I don't really play AAA games any more since game deving. Give pretty much anybody 100 million dollars and a team of 200 highly trained workers and a AAA game would be made.
Give an indie developer $1000 and something pretty awesome could come out of it. AAA companies need to hire indie developers and give them free reign to make anything they want. 
it's not that independent game designers are better than AAA ones, it's that "AAA designers" are often hindered by the companies who are funding their games, who are concerned about risk.
let's create a hypothetical company that's willing to fund incredibly innovative and unique games. naturally, if you're a member of a large team, you're more than likely going to have a diminished say in the game you're working on. you're, I dunno, an environmental artist, and you're doing the best job you can. the game flops. the company invested a lot of money in the game and in order to minimize their losses, you wind up getting laid off or the studio shuts down. it wasn't really your fault you lost your job. it happened because they didn't know how well the game was going to perform since there were no analytics to go off of because no games like it existed before. innovation is inherently risky, and the ramifications of that risk don't fall just on some corporate fat cats: it falls on the employees too.
independent game developers aren't having to worry about the livelihoods of others. most don't work full time or they have something to fall back on. it's more conducive of innovation. if you gave them full reign over a large team, suddenly they're responsible for other people. suddenly the risk has gone up dramatically.
