Academic or non Academic Journal as a professional?
Research is almost always an incremental venture: current breakthroughs are dependent on, motivated by, and understood within the context of past work and the current state of the field. Good academic journals generally aim to publish articles that are significant and novel contributions to human knowledge, and if you aren't keeping abreast of the research that is being done, then it's very unlikely that you will be able to understand how your research fits into the field and whether or not it actually is new or significant. 

If you're planned article doesn't address those concerns (usually through a short literature review and the proper citations of previous work), then it will almost certainly be rejected from most reputable academic journals. You should read papers from the venues that you are looking at to get an idea of the expectations and practices, but it is very rare for someone who is not trained in and/or experienced with the research community to publish articles at their venues.

Note: I am not familiar with those particular journals and the nature of what they publish, so I do not know how "academic" or not either of them are.

To address some other aspects:


  despite it probably being more prestigious than JCGT.


If you aren't and don't plan on working in academia or doing research, I'm not sure why academic prestige would matter to you.


  Not sure if doing research and publishing it in academic journals can likely help one earn an honorary degree or not, but I guess that would be another item to consider, if that's within the realm of likelihood!


It's almost certainly not worth considering. Honorary degrees aren't actually useful in any real sense. They are more like lifetime achievement awards; if you're in a position to get one then you almost certainly have no need for one.


  My main goal is just to explore and share some techniques, and contribute to my field for the betterment of science as well as my fellow game developers.


If that's your goal, then I'm not sure why you care about publishing in a journal at all. Why not just write a blog post or put your work online at some other venue? That's free, open-access, and you retain all the rights to your work if desired.