It seems like games/platforms/etc. that introduce some novel type of user-generated content become successful. I would bet that some web 2.0 version of the game "telephone" would wind up being super popular.
There was a really great real-world-ish equivalent of this called Chain World. A game of Minecraft on a USB stick that you were to play as normal but promise that, if you died, you'd quit the game forever and give the USB stick onto someone else. They'd then respawn in the now-abandoned world you'd been building.
Having a unique aspect to a game makes it more interesting for blogs to write about it.
Although human interaction is much more interesting to play as well. I recall a single-player game, except you could make just one decision for the next player you'll never meet — whether to forgive them for a crime or not at the end — and just this single bit made it at least twice as interesting.
Argh I remember the game you're talking about. I read an article about it and have been trying to find that article again since the last few weeks and it's been driving me crazy that I can't remember its name.
The game had a 2.5d engine. A character in a village told you to find someone in a cave. You bring a knife with you for defense. In the cave, you find someone else who is bloody with a knife, your character accuses them of killing the person you're looking for, and they say a message in response. You can either kill the person or let them pass, though you get blood on you if you do either. When you go to leave the cave, another character finds you, stops you, threatens you with a knife as you look suspicious, and accuses you of killing the person you were looking for. You're prompted to type a message in response to defend yourself. The game immediately cuts to black and ends after you type your message.
The message that the bloodied character you meet earlier says to you is the message a previous player typed at the end. Your message gets seen by a future player in the same way.
The developer took down the server for the game at some point because people filled the game with inappropriate messages and then used bots to keep doing so.
If anyone remembers the name of the game, please mention it to me because I've been dying to remember it.
Games with novel interactions between users are generally the ones with the substantial staying power. The rest are either clones that crest and fall with fad or "movies" that get played once and discarded.
It seems like games/platforms/etc. that introduce some novel type of user-generated content become successful. I would bet that some web 2.0 version of the game "telephone" would wind up being super popular.