I work in game development; the amount of care and craft depends on whether I am working on a reusable component / shared system, or one-off code for a specific feature.

The real hell comes when you think you're working on one and it's actually the other; you either burn time on an overcomplicated solution or invent a maintenance nightmare.

Just like any other development, you need to make guesses about what will change and what will stay the same and your efficiency depends on the accuracy of those guesses.