Splitting from the experiences of others, I think the mentality somewhat comes down to your preference in what you seek to do in videogames and how you engage with them. In these types of sandbox building games, career developers naturally get somewhat of a "cheat" to becoming proficient quickly in that the mode of expressing logical sentiments will only ever be a few abstractions away from what you would do normally at your work, so you feel less constrained to building understanding of a system and can instead use the system as a way to output your ideas in a way faster than others might. In this sense, it's somewhat of a power fantasy that if you vs the average person were to play this game that you would most likely be able to clearly express your ideas and goals and be able to act on them, which makes it fun to go off the rails to show off "some crazy thing" you've made as a slight nod to your perceived skill being able to make these things.
Consequently, that's why I'm so disinterested in learning these games. The discussion about them shifts into a thin one layer abstraction for other people to try to brag about their accomplishments and what they self injected as their experience instead of the game itself. This doesn't affect the gameplay, but it affects my perception of the game as a shallow vehicle for attention seekers more than it promotes the ideas of fun gameplay.
That said, sometimes the style of gameplay resonates with a style of development you might have been interested in understanding more and can use it as a way to get motivation or inspiration for ideas. Automating pipelines, physics simulations, etc. I think it's always worth a shot on games that have notable recognition of quality to see if it jives with what you enjoy, but it's been the exception more than the rule in my case.