Does viewing programming as problem solving discourage creativity?

Games vary a lot based on what is involved.

A game like Fate/Stay Night has almost no gameplay. It is all graphics and story.

A game like Tetris has almost no story, but the strong sense of objective plays a role for the player that is like a story.

There is very little problem solving in creating a Visual Novel game, particularly if you are making a series of them like the Science Adventure series where you probably got the technical issues sorted out by the first game. On the other hand a game like Tetris has more problems that turn up in implementation and particularly involves some tweaking of the rules to make the game really satisfying.

The problems are

- how to store data

- how to interact between user and other agents

- how to render

- how to curate the requisite “fun” through rules and actions