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# Is there value in replaying games that you’ve finished?
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/there-value-replaying-games-youve-finished/
- Published: 2012-03-19T05:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2024-07-26T10:36:51.000Z
- Description: Author Helen DeWitt was asked by a journalist about books that she’s re-read during her lifespan. What ensued was a 5000 word list of her favorites — but more notably, she outlines how that book had changed from her initial read to her subsequent re-read (or rerereread as it were). She explains: Rer
- Author: Jamin Warren
- Tags: News, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

Author Helen DeWitt was asked by a journalist about books that she’s re-read during her lifespan. What ensued was a [5000 word list of her favorites](http://paperpools.blogspot.ca/2012/03/rerererereading.html?ref=killscreen.com) — but more notably, she outlines how that book had changed from her initial read to her subsequent re-read (or rerereread as it were). She explains:

> Rereading is important for writers because people in the publishing industry constantly give advice couched in terms of helping the reader. If you are not only a reader, or even a rereader, but a rerererererererererereader, you know this is complete bollocks. “The” reader does not exist. The 9-year-old who read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe 50 times in a year is genetically identical to the 54-year-old who has read Invisible Cities more times than she can count (if certainly not 50). The 16-year-old who read Pride and Prejudice as historical romance (I know Austen was forbidden, but really) is genetically identical to the 54-year-old who reads it for its social analysis, its savagery. (The 16-year-old would have had no interest in Goffman or Bourdieu; the 54-year-old sees Austen as their intellectual cousin.)   
>  
> As a rereader you can’t be an amnesiac: you KNOW there were books you loved and outgrew, books you hated first time, admired 20 years later.

The idea that a work envelops you differently over a period of time struck me as a game-player and how as I mature (hopefully) my understanding of the work changes as well. It’s rare that I find time to re-play games. It’s sad really. But having revisited *Plants Vs. Zombies* recently, my apprecaition for tower-defense games has certainly grown.

Are there any games that you’ve re-played, but understood differently because of changes in your life or outlook?

\[via [LongReads](http://longreads.com/community/?ref=killscreen.com)\]