While I have only been a packager for a short while (approval was on 2009-07-12), I have been the games spin maintainer since December 2008 (getting git commit access on 2009-01-09).
My main interest in getting proven packager access is in order to be able to do minor fixes or rebuilds for games included in the games spin. In the past I have found build requires problems that needed fixing, and the maintainers were not always prompt to fix these. Also occasionally (as with the current openal-soft change) games need to be rebuilt to accommodate library updates and maintainers don't always jump on those.