I don't think we're saying they don't care.
It's a balance, right? I've been around long enought to see the UI/UX world emerge and become more defined, but some of that world is common sense that comes with experience. In my experience some UI/UX is hot-air, and in fact gets in the way of getting things done, but other bits/and insights are super useful. What I'm suggesting is to tease out specifics with reference to systems that others are familiar with- games.
As far as UI/UX world goes it has a problem of becoming fashionable, popular and somewhat profitable. This always attracts certain kinds of people and hot air. I'm sure you have plenty of your own examples in academia.
In our case our group is funded primarily by an endowement. We use (dogfood) our own software, therefor we are accountable to ourselves. We are also developing it for our friends, collaborators, and other scientists who have traditionally not had access to the types of tools we work on, we are accountable to them. The bits that exist are because our users need them, have co-designed them, and have given us a ton of feedback as to how to iteratively improve them. We don't have to sell ($) them a product (yes, we understand there are long term issues with growth, support, and sustainability that will take hard work to deal with).
We're fortunate enough to have time to think and engage with concepts that startups that must have to sell products must master, thus we can "dream" about what game interfaces might bring to the table.