I play Cities Skylines for that reason I have to debug the traffic but mostly have fun building the city the way I want. Like once I feel like building a lot of tram lines, other time building train lines.

I also build side projects - but from the game I get instant gratification as I can build decent city with goal I have in one evening whereas side project to have anything I can say is pleasing takes much more time than one evening.

Games don't have annoying blockers like trying to use some new library, cities I build also did not work first times I was playing because I was noob - but even libraries frameworks I use on daily basis always have some kinks I have to figure out so it takes multiple evening anyway.