Videogame != Source Code
My friend, Chris, is an awesome game developer who taught me quite a bit about what it means to make a game. He recently commented on an article called "What Pac-Man Really Looks Like", which brings up the question of whether a disassembly of the Pac-Man program is what the game really is. It seems like it's brought up an interesting question of whether or not a videogame is its source code and Chris hadn't found a proper answer just yet.
The following is my stab at a response to the question:
Saying a videogame is its source code seems like saying a building is its blueprint or some dish is its ingredients; It is a very crude definition. There is much more to a creation than its DNA or even its behavior/end-result. Taking the classic super mario bros as an example, you can copy its source code, emulate it, clone it, etc. to come out with the same game but it would mean nothing today.
Theoretically speaking, consider if super mario bros in its exact same form is released for the first time ever today amongst the Halo series, Zelda series, etc. It wouldn't have the impact in the same capacity as it has to the history of video games because the platform, style, gameplay, graphics are just no longer relevant. Similarly, Van Gogh's work, Mozart's compositions, or Einstein's theories would have no impact if you assumed that it's only a matter of time before such genius was produced by some other person, somewhere else, at some other point in time. A little bit like how the Maya came up with the same astrological conclusions as did the European world but it didn't matter.
The context matters and that mario bros was revolutionary at the time in its success and ultimately Nintendo's success, which allowed future Nintendo franchises to come to fruition is as much part of the game as is its source code.At the end of the day, it didn't matter which bits allowed the joystick and buttons to change where a big yellow circle and ghosts were displayed on a screen, but rather that the source code was the ingredients and the computer, the tools to cook up an interaction that was intriguing enough at the time to have millions of big and heavy computers built only for this game and released across the world, and even creating a coin deficit in Japan due to its popularity but more generally, a chain reaction of other games following it that got us to where we are today. And I think that reaction ignited by the game is as much a part of the art of game development as is creating the code/assets, and the source code is only part of the picture.
