Brand Robins you didn’t ask me, but I’ll answer anyway, ’cause who can stop me?

I will spend hours and hours making pre-gens and stuff for a con-game. I put that work in as GM because I crave the praise of the players. I want them to walk away from the game saying “that Hans, I don’t care what people say about him, he had his shit together, he had it NAILED”. I feel a strong responsibility for the entertainment of those 3 to 6 people for the ~3.5 hours I will be playing with them, they have paid actual money to spend time with me. I owe them to do my best.

I do not consider that activity play, I consider it work. As Paul said, work can (should?) be fun and rewarding. I enjoy that work tremendously.

EDIT: strangely, I feel less this urge to “get it right” with my own friends in my own games, probably because they routinely cut me slack and will hopefully still love me afterwards.