WE LIVE in a remake and remix culture. Rip it up and start again? Nah, let’s rip it up and do it all over again. In a slightly different order, perhaps.

On TV this year we’ve seen a much belated comeback for a couple of FBI agents from the UFO-obsessed mid-1990s with the return of The X-Files. Coming up next year, we’ll be returning to the surrealistic and seedy small-town absurdities of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.

Both shows were great fun in their heyday but these belated returns can’t help but be bitter disappointments, sullying the memories of the originals.

Imagine, if instead of remaking those shows, you could just keep tinkering with the originals. A line that doesn’t quite work, an actor that doesn’t quite hit the mark — rewrite, recalibrate, respond to audience feedback and make changes until the whole show is as perfect as it can be.

And then tinker some more.

Obviously, this is impossible, and slightly crazy. The level of CGI alone that would be necessary would be beyond even the megalomania of a George Lucas and, besides, who would be prepared to watch a show over and over again other than the most obsessed fans?

Part of the joy of film and television is that they operate as time capsules, which is why Lucas’s desperate attempts to “improve” the original Star Wars trilogy were met with such horror.

But this is something you can do with modern video games. In a world where the physical purchase of games is an increasingly hazy memory, it’s increasingly impossible to review a game on release because you know it won’t be the finished version. Often, this is for cynical reasons. You sell the bare bones of a game, then charge users for “extra” downloadable content.

It can also be a very good thing. Back in the ’90s, I bought a game with one slight flaw — your spaceship exploded if you tried to fly it anywhere.

The game in question was Frontier Elite 2: First Encounters, a sequel to the legendary 1980s space exploration, trade and fighting game.

Today, you can buy Elite: Dangerous. It’s still far from perfect but with a dedicated global squadron of Elite obsessives who helped fund the game through fundraising.

The experience is forever expanding, changing and — as hope springs eternal — improving.

A game I’ve recently been playing online is called Awesomenauts, a multiplayer online battle area game which is a fun platformer with its own cartoony aesthetic. You select from a range of eccentric alien fighting characters and play 3 v 3 online battles with like-minded souls across the world, some of whom will type abuse at you when you turn out to be terrible at defending your base.

The game came out in 2012 and had some early teething troubles. Some of the characters were overpowered, which meant that losing sometimes didn’t feel fair.

The solution? Endless tinkering by the game’s developers, plus the addition of new characters and stages to keep the whole thing fun and interesting.

Four years later, the game still has thousands of dedicated players from all over the world, and new upgrades and patches keep on coming.

But there’s downside to games that are reliant on online play. While I can plug in a copy of Super Mario from the 1980s and have the same experience, a game that depends on locating other humans will eventually wither and die.

Spare a thought for the online Mary Celestes, still maintained by a few spluttering servers, with a handful of players forlornly searching for others with whom to explore and fight.

There is something beautiful about the ephemeral nature of these spaces. They may have been made as perfect as they can be but, eventually, people move on and the gorgeous worlds turn to dust. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Rip it up and start again.