I might be biased as a programmer but I'm also guessing you've never worked on a video game and have a slightly romantized view of game development? If you have

I might be biased as a programmer but I'm also guessing you've never worked on a video game and have a slightly romantized view of game development? If you have worked on games potentially you've worked on a product that had very clear separation of responsibility and where game play programmer and game designers were the same role? Just like PMs and designers don't wholly own product direction for a web or mobile application, game designers and artists don't entirely own game feel and even if they do they are often gated or empowered by systems developed and designed by programmers. In most cases designers are also programmers ("scripters") so you can make the further argument that game system design actually is just a form of programming, even if the designers aren't always writing code in the traditional sense.