To call the process of turning an empty directory into a bunch of working code "manufacturing" is objectionable, misleading and probably also insulting; it confuses the writing of the software with the putting of CDs in glossy shrinkwrapped boxes, in the process implying that the code gets written by some mass-production process, with no creative or inventive step.

For a complex product containing code and other resources, such as your video-game example, I suggest "design". "Make" and "create" are OK, but fail to distinguish between design and manufacture, thereby creating unnecessary ambiguity.

You seem to have a very negative notion of manufacturing as a concept. My notion of the word is influenced by the time I spent working at a materials testing company, where the Manufacturing Department involved a good deal of precision hand-crafting of components: highly-skilled non-mass-production work - only a minority of the department's employees were involved in packaging the product.

(This is not to say that I would use the word "manufacture" for writing programs, but that's more because manufacture implies production of physical entities to me, than because I find the word insulting.)

I did say "probably" insulting. Normally, when people talk about manufacturing, they're thinking of a huge production line and semi-skilled labour.

I know work that's much more skilled gets counted as manufacturing, but it's a minority, and if I were doing work like that I'd say I "crafted" things rather than "manufactured" them, to make sure people realised this. (-8

Also, ironically, "hand-made" and "manufactured" seem to be very nearly antonyms now.