I agree with this in general and that a game in theory is so much more than code. The the one caveat is that code is the ultimate bottleneck of games. Assets, story, mechanics, design are all mediated my code and that code complexity is what limits scope.

Also, a lot of these aspects are touted as stuff that AI is so good good at: AI can write better fiction, AI can design better, AI can produce better art, AI can infinitely churn out 3D models, etc. There are people 100% sincerely drumming the same beat that we see here concerning code for all these areas... and yet something really isn't there yet.