The other day, I had a similar thought about the relative importance of code.

I'm working on a game, and I've been fussing over the code quality. And yeah, having code that isn't awful is important for various reasons. But with a game, it got me thinking, the code is literally the only part of the game the player doesn't experience.

The time I'm spending on the code, I could be spending on the art, the game design, the music, the story...

But my natural tendency is to hyper-focus on the only part of the game nobody will ever see. I thought that was interesting.

(That being said the codebase is ass and I do need to clean it up!)

My point of view is that code is the experience. Dealing with the constraints of code is one of the ways game design evolves as one iterates over what could be cool and filter for what is possible.