I’ll add that I think you have to consider the limitations and advantages of the platform.
The lack of major visual elements really hampers the 70%-ish of people who need them to engage with material in any medium. However, I’ve found the special effects for my project to be very affordable. I think it was Chuck P. who said that if you write, tell stories you can’t tell in other mediums, due to budget, scope, ratings approval. That is the main reason I broke away from screenplay, which I am more established in, to try an idea that no studio could budget for. Heart’s Choice is exploring that in the ratings sense. Visual RPGs touch on the erotic, but nothing quite focuses on it yet. Nothing big, anyway. There are a few oddities on Steam.
The unique value proposition of a CoG, to me, is the emotional impact of story elements (like a book) because of the way characters and events are instilled with meaning over time. As far as gaming goes, it’s a slow dosage. However, it is more co-creative/participatory than a novel. The writer promises delayed gratification, and the reader pays by suspending disbelief.
I worry that game-ier games will try to be a bad game, rather than a good book, if that makes any sense. Even creative use of ChoiceScript will struggle to make something as interesting as Number Munchers which is >20yrs old. I guess it could do an Oregon Trail, but I bet $10 that the bookish version in the right hands is 10x better.