> That's just something people do because they feel like it, are bored, enjoy it in their spare time?

It's an emerging technology and platform. There are economic advantages to having early access to learn what it can do.

Furthermore, this specific colunteer program appears to have an associated contest that pays creators who win. Thus you have a lot of volunteers, limited under NDA, being pushed to compete for vert limited renumeration for their efforts. I doubt most of the volunteers are bored people doing it as a hobby.