I might agree with the argument when it comes to plastic modelling, but I would disagree when it comes to wooden ship modelling.<p>I've been building a wooden ship model kit that I got many years ago, and have utterly enjoyed the process of trying to create something that is both historically accurate, as well as aesthetically pleasing. The selection, preparation, and treatment of the materials used is a huge factor in creating something desirable.<p>Let's just say I find more value over taking a few weeks to experiment with various wood aging and staining techniques to get just the right look for the weathered decks than I would tweaking a shader.
There's just not enough uniformity of content. There are museum collections and specialist websites, but there's no "WikiSimulate" that aims to be a universal compendium of different objects and their functions. The deepest modeling resources are behind paywalls because it simply isn't practical to gamify every object in the world for free. For example, I can purchase World of Guns or Car Mechanic Simulator, but I don't think the author realized how fragmented and piecemeal the effort to digitally represent the real world would be even decades later.
The pleasure of building models to tinker with is more or less why I find programming fun, for me the puzzle solving isn't really the real juice. Even when at work the most seemingly boring business domains are fun to model.