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!)