Another good game is to try and make Tetris - that was my first, and illustrates the author's point pretty well: a game is more than just the small bit the play

Another good game is to try and make Tetris - that was my first, and illustrates the author's point pretty well: a game is more than just the small bit the player sees, but rather a whole host of orchestration to get to that point. Though I'd argue game makers should use HTML5 or something like Unity these days rather than writing their own engine :)