It always takes a while for new media to let go of the interfaces and assumptions regarding content and form that they inherited from old media.  To this day many digital media players still resemble audio cassette decks, and it took a couple decades for filmmakers to stop thinking about movies as stageplays with a camera for an audience.

Yes, there is a certain sense in which a movie is a bit like a filmed play, but nowadays that sense is no longer sought in the proscenium arch and the positioning of the camera as an ersatz audience member.

What makes matters even more difficult in this particular media shift is that a whole new dimension of complexity is introduced by direct interactivity, and another by the blurring of the line between participant and audience.  This is a paradigmatic shift that cannot be semiotically mapped to other forms of media.

Inspiration, and emulation, by all means.  I do a lot of genre sim.  But I also know that a new medium doesn’t really come into its own until it does things that other media cannot do.