"draw himself a character and the program the character to respond to key presses."

Except, don't you see that that's him controlling the machine and making it do things magically at his whim with the right combination of instructions?

The statement I made may not be universal, but you provided an example, not a counterexample, which infers you may not have well understood the full scope of said statement.

And most certainly cats and barns is a stab at universal-as-possible fun. We may not be identical, but nor are we that different.