I'm a sample of one, but I was kind of in your shoes. I'm a huge baseball fan and spent lots of time programming tools to help me perform better in my fantasy leagues. From there, I thought, "why not program my own baseball simulator?"<p>I started but kept running into "I wonder how they do....?" interface questions because I didn't like gaming, so I started playing a baseball simulator.<p>To say I was fucking amazed would be an incredible understatement. The complexity and depth they achieved was so far out of my league that I wanted to keep playing, partly as a tribute and partly in hopes of figuring out their secrets. But, if you'd asked me then, I still would have said, "Yeah, I don't like games."<p>And, then for Christmas a few years ago, we got our kids a PS4. At first, I was a fuddy duddy who didn't like games, but then my stepdaughter taught me how to play Minecraft...<p>Today, roughly four years have gone by since I decided to build my own baseball simulation. As it stands, the simulation might be one of the worst pieces of software ever built, though I learned so much when I was working on it.<p>But, the biggest difference is that now, I play games. I actually bought GTA5 a few months ago and can't believe how much fun I have playing it.<p>TL;DR - Go right ahead, even for a side project. However, if you don't play games, you'll likely end up playing a few, just to figure out how others present information and request input. Then, be very careful because once you get over the amazement at what people can accomplish, you might start having fun. :)