what difference does it make if the high score table is reset? if you got that score you got that score, that's your achievement, the record just commemorates it.

score very much is the measure of success in pacman and its contempiraries. what else is there?

If you consider the high score list as you would a city wall where local graffiti writers put their tags as a territorial guestbook it makes more sense IMO :-)

Sure, you know that you "won" - but there is also something to the idea of bragging about it!

It’s like a metaphor saying only literal outcomes and shape of the world mean much. Whereas our ephemeral emotions which require us to stay “plugged into” an increasingly demanding cultural tradition despite the diminishing ROI most people are seeing (cause they’re ignoring the literal outcomes and shape for emotional feitishism)