In a lot of cases, people play the game through first before doing follow-up playthroughs dissecting it.
And dissecting (or tangentially related, speedrunning) the game is its own fun.
I felt it when I was playing Diablo 3 a few years ago; the 'core' game is a four chapter story (5th added with DLC) where you go through it with your character. But after that you can replay it at higher difficulties - again, nothing new there. But there are a dozen difficulty levels after 'normal', so you can keep going. And the goals shift. You no longer play to get through the game's story, you start to play to find better gear, gather materials, cross your fingers and hope to find a rare enemy that gives you access to a secret area. Eventually, the levels became a blur, the story something you just skip over because the in-game writing / voice acting is pretty poor (cutscenes are on point though). Later on they added Adventure Mode, allowing you to skip through the game world out of order and pursue different goals (e.g. "kill this enemy in this area") across the maps to work towards a reward, and Rifts, (semi)randomly generated dungeons that you are challenged to run as fast and frequently as possible. Finally there's Greater Rifts, challenge modes where the global goal for all players is to get to the highest, most difficult level. They further extended the lifetime and replayability of the game by adding Seasons, where you create a new character to get through the game for unique / one-off rewards.
I'm not sure where I'm going with that but long story short, there are many ways to enjoy a game that are not limited to the game itself as it's meant to be played.
Disclaimer: I run a fan website for a long-running game franchise where some of our members have gone really deep into the game(s), destructuring it, learning to and writing code to read and edit save files, going through the internet archive and contacting people to try and find and salvage old, defunct instalments and side projects of said series (like online modes, mobile games on feature phones), etcetera. Others (re)translate the games, write down novelized versions of games and movies, create art, discuss theories, make predictions about future instalments, etcetera.
I wouldn't have met my girlfriend if I had 'just' played a game.
And dissecting (or tangentially related, speedrunning) the game is its own fun.
I felt it when I was playing Diablo 3 a few years ago; the 'core' game is a four chapter story (5th added with DLC) where you go through it with your character. But after that you can replay it at higher difficulties - again, nothing new there. But there are a dozen difficulty levels after 'normal', so you can keep going. And the goals shift. You no longer play to get through the game's story, you start to play to find better gear, gather materials, cross your fingers and hope to find a rare enemy that gives you access to a secret area. Eventually, the levels became a blur, the story something you just skip over because the in-game writing / voice acting is pretty poor (cutscenes are on point though). Later on they added Adventure Mode, allowing you to skip through the game world out of order and pursue different goals (e.g. "kill this enemy in this area") across the maps to work towards a reward, and Rifts, (semi)randomly generated dungeons that you are challenged to run as fast and frequently as possible. Finally there's Greater Rifts, challenge modes where the global goal for all players is to get to the highest, most difficult level. They further extended the lifetime and replayability of the game by adding Seasons, where you create a new character to get through the game for unique / one-off rewards.
I'm not sure where I'm going with that but long story short, there are many ways to enjoy a game that are not limited to the game itself as it's meant to be played.
Disclaimer: I run a fan website for a long-running game franchise where some of our members have gone really deep into the game(s), destructuring it, learning to and writing code to read and edit save files, going through the internet archive and contacting people to try and find and salvage old, defunct instalments and side projects of said series (like online modes, mobile games on feature phones), etcetera. Others (re)translate the games, write down novelized versions of games and movies, create art, discuss theories, make predictions about future instalments, etcetera.
I wouldn't have met my girlfriend if I had 'just' played a game.