Hey vic! I couldn't agree more. I've been inmerse in the game dev world for many years. And the time I've spent in doing so were the moments that I grew the most as a programmer. Actually I learnt to code by modifying en open source RPG game built on C++
It was really cool to see and interact with the little modification I made to the game. Creating my own monsters and seen them fight with player or just between each other, was epic.
I just finished building a plain JS puzzle game and it really helped me to improve at JS. Now I just started with Unity. I'm very interested in prodecural animation and the unity engine for AI.