Right. I didn’t include beta testing, of which I have done a bit. For enjoyment, however, my answer is “never.”
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I’ve only ever replayed games if I really enjoyed them and knew there were different endings and I was curious to see what else there was to do. The only game I replayed multiple times was The Hobbit because there were so many different things to do in the game that even if you finished it, it was still worth playing again just to see what else you could do. I probably slaughtered half of the inhabitants of Middle Earth constantly replaying and seeing if it was possible to kill Gandalf, Thorin, Elrond and the rest. It left the game in an unwinnable position but it was bags of fun all the same.
Most games, however, I just play once then push them to one side. A game has to be pretty special for me to give it another go.
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I try never to replay anything, nor reread books, nor rewatch films or series, just because my time on earth is finite. I made the decision a long time ago not to waste the little time I have for fiction.
Said that, sometimes I must replay because of my work, to study a game in deep, or because I’m showcasing a game on Twitch TV, or preparing a talk for the classroom.
Sometimes, if a game is designed to be replayed, I don’t feel like replaying it. It is as if the pillar of the gameplay is a replay, so that counts for me as 1 session. But, even for games designed to have several branches of content, I usually stay with the one I got, think of Skyrim… I don’t care if “the best single-player experience” is content that I missed, I finished it a long time ago.
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Ah, but if the one you already read is already known to bring you pleasure, why risk reading a book or playing a game you’ll dislike? 
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All the things I’ve posted that may make it seem like I actually did something with the game/book/movie the post is about is a fake. Every review I’ve posted is a sham. They’re all the product of the blind monkeys in my basement banging at their keyboards.
Myself, I’ve been reading and rereading A is for Apple, B is for Bear since I was a toddler. It was not that good when I first read it, and there’re not many layers to uncover by rereading.
But it’s nice and comforting, and I’m worried I might be disappointed if I should try something else.
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I’ll subtract 1 from the number of good reviews I keep track of on my chalkboard.
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I don’t think that risk aversion is a major factor in the poll results.
So far as our limited time on earth goes, I try to enjoy myself and help people now and then (though not as much as I could, I confess). Some people live for novelty, while others live for something else. That is up to them!
Ideally, people are able to do whatever they want with their leisure time, so long as it hurts no one.
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Yeah, but I have already done that so long ago. I’ve read The Hobbit 25 times, and The lord of the rings around 17. And Tom Sawyer around 20 times.
Enough is enough XD
Drew has summarized it perfectly: I live for novelty 
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“I don’t know anybody who erases crossword puzzles to fill them in again.” - Michael Berlyn.
I voted Occasionally, but it is bordering on Rarely. I think that adventure games in general have a problem with replayability. They tend to be very linear by design and the puzzles usually only have one solution, so once you find that one solution, you have very little incentive to try and approach it in a different way.
I am not a huge fan of ChoiceScript, but I think that this is one area where CYOA games have an advantage.
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I don’t generally intend to replay, but if I read a review of something I’ve played, I often look it over to see if I missed anything. In some cases, the review indicates that I did!
This is a good point, and I’d like to cite the exception that proves the rule: the Self-Referential Aptitude Test. I know the answer(s), but it’s still fun to work through every few years, Perhaps I’m remembering the first time I saw it, along with the logic, and perhaps it serves as a substitute for a cognitive test to show myself I know more than man, woman, camera. But if something has the right amount of intuition needed, it’s neat to come back to.
For the most part, definitely! But for more complex ones there’s a strong possibility I’ll have forgotten a lot, enough to have a general idea about everything but to be able to reason things out slightly differently.
This may be personal vanity but looking at my anagram games or (even more so) Threediopolis/Fourdiopolis, I often enjoy seeing which puzzles I left for the end and which I just forgot. It requires some time to forget! But of course there are huge chunks where I just tick off puzzles. Still, I think for overall time spent, it’s a good return on investment. Something new pops up as I try something slightly different.
This holds doubly for works of others I’ve enjoyed, since I’m – well, less close to the writing process.
And there seems to be a paradox here for me. If a puzzle or story is really good/memorable, it’ll take longer to lose my memory and appreciate it for the first time. But if it’s a bit vague, I may have to use more reasoning. This isn’t necessarily an either-or thing, but it’s quite possible.
I’ve certainly replayed a lot of stuff I saw when I got back into the scene in 2010-11 especially for the IFComps. I know more about game design etc. now and what should be fairer/hinted or not, and I can see a lot of “oh that’s how and why they did it and why it works!”
Two examples might be Cana according to Micah and The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M–the second, I just kind of enjoyed at first, and the first, I didn’t, and I appreciate them much more on replay, having gone through a bunch of other works first.
I also confess to reading a lot of walkthroughs of stuff I’ve played, if I don’t have the time to replay. That seems good value for time, too.
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I couldn’t write about Mike Berlyn’s games if I didn’t replay them, but that’s a separate matter.
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Sometimes I just forget what I played and start again.
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True, but crosswords and games are completely different things. I quite often watch films I’ve seen before even though I know what is going to happen. The same with books and TV shows.
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Ooh, great point there … with TV shows on YouTube this is especially true to me as just reading through the comments section can be valuable. Of course there is a lot of “This was great! Kids these days don’t know what REAL entertainment is!” but there are some commenters who are observant and point out details I’d have missed otherwise. For instance, someone commenting on Weird Al’s White and Nerdy that the guys in the car are Key and Peele makes things extra funny and, who knows, maybe (re-)exposes someone to Key and Peele’s great skits.
And with TV shows on YouTube you don’t have to read a full essay! Of course, essays are very good. But sometimes I don’t have the energy to give them the attention they deserve.
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Even for games that aren’t very replayable, like Obra Dinn, I also enjoy watching other people play them to get the experience of solving it for the first time.
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I really enjoy rewatching movies or shows with people who have never seen them. It’s better than simply talking about it after they watch on their own.
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Why I choose to replay a game usually differs. Sometimes I feel like I didn’t give it a fair chance the first time around, like if I was tired, hungry, or otherwise in a bad mood the first time I played it. Or if I was too quick to judge it and let those impressions stick around while I played, only to be proven wrong later on. In this case, I’m willing to give it the extra time to re-evaluate my thoughts.
I’ve replayed a few games that I really enjoy. In one like Best of Three or Pytho’s Mask, I feel that there’s so much content that I’ll never uncover it all. But I do love to return to them and start poking around every so often; finding a new branch of conversation that I never knew about just makes me appreciate the games even more. Kerkerkruip was made with replays in mind, and I could play it hundreds of times and have a totally different experience in each run. But if it’s just a straightforward, linear adventure story, I’d be less inclined to visit it again until at least a few years have passed.
Or sometimes, I’m not really in the mood to try a new game, and would prefer to stick with something I’m sure will give me the experience I want. I play In a Manor of Speaking for a quick pick-me-up every once in a while, because the game is so impossibly silly that it’s hard not to laugh. Threediopolis and Junior Arithmancer are fun to figure out time and time again. Don’t get me wrong, I’d never give up the experience of jumping into a new game and seeing it for the first time, but sometimes it’s comforting to just go back and remind myself of why I loved a game in the first place.
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There have been a few games that I’ve replayed for this reason. I was pretty certain the game was awful, but then I’m like “Well…was it, though?”
So I play it again, and 35% of the time I was correct the first time around, but 65% of the time it turns out I’m actually a moron and missed a giant signposted clue or detail, or I completely misinterpreted something.
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I do that a lot in watching other people’s YT playthroughs, and never thought about it in that way about why I do this.
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I would argue that crosswords and games actually have a lot in common. They both require a level of interactivity and problem solving that usually isn’t found in other forms of entertainment. Granted, books can benefit from note-taking, but I have yet to encounter a book that required me to draw a map and navigate a hedge maze in order to read the final page.
Much like you, I am also able to watch movies and television shows many times without getting bored. But those forms of entertainment are often one-way conversations. While books require you to at least visualize descriptions and understand language, movies and television shows often only ask you to react emotionally, not intellectually. I would argue that this is why the phrase “turn off your brain” gets tossed around a lot when critiquing action movies or summer blockbusters. I would also argue that this is why binge-watching has become such a common activity.
Now that I have had time to think about, I really do feel that the lack of variety in regards to puzzle solutions is the thing that usually holds adventure games back from being as replayable as say a shooter or a platformer. It is satisfying when you finally realize that key to the locked door is hiden in an ice cube in the refrigerator, and that you now have to microwave that ice cube in order to obtain the key and finish the game, but seeing how that is the only way to get the locked door open, I doubt a lot of players will feel the need to solve that same puzzle over and over.
Moonmist is rarely heralded as one of Infocom’s best, but I do like how it tries to handle the issue of replayability. Moonmist is a detective game with four different scenarios, each with its own suspects, clues, and solutions. The game recycles the same characters and locations, but the storylines do change. It is far from perfect, but it does feel like a step in the right direction.
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