And it's not just games, this trend of moving code into data. I've been in several companies where their fundamental logic was a configuration interpreter, very

And it's not just games, this trend of moving code into data. I've been in several companies where their fundamental logic was a configuration interpreter, very complex, tied to a gigantic set of xml or json "configurations" which themselves had interdependent logic written as structure. So when maybe the first iteration 20 years ago was all fun and giggles "look a monkey could edit a few knobs and it all moves around fine", today it's a tangled mess that an ever rotating set of new people build on top of with no validation tool, no formalized syntax, no ability to test nor explain the holistic logic of. So, as you say, we end up running the thing and looking if the output makes sense, the code working more out of luck than engineering.