There is a strange phenomena that has been occurring in console games, one that can be seen as great or annoying. It's mostly appearing in RPG games, but has made some brief appearances in board games as well.
This is the inclusion of a whole different game inside of a game.
To be clear, this is nothing new. Minigames are quite common in video games and some (like Mario Party and Wario Ware Inc.) are entirely made up of video games. What I'm referring to is a Game-within-a-game that is not just a small break from the action, but an entirely new experience.
For the best example, take Little Big Planet. At first glance you have a very quick platform game comprised of designer-created levels. Let's call that Game A. You go through and beat all the levels and get enough items that you're satisfied, then move on to God of War and tear the head off a medusa. WRONG! There is an additional creation game inside of Little Big Planet that is completely different from the level platform game. This Game B requires a different set of skills and is so much more vast than a minigame that you will probably spend as much time on Game B (if not more) than Game A.
Most Game B's are based around an online community, and are becoming more complex as technology (and budgets) increase. For my game design research I would like to look into some more examples of Game Inception and see what future games are going to offer.
