A recent patent application was brought to the public's attention on Bnet. The patent lends people to believe that Google may begin using YouTube to host some sort of online games. Google's patent, Web-Based System for Generation of Interactive Games Based on Digital Videos, was filed back in February, but was just published in December. The patent brings about the idea of interactive video clips that can contain link objects, which can be used to jump to specific parts of the video. This can sort of be understood like a DVD menu, where clicking on a certain choice will jump you to a certain scene of the movie.
Here's the patent description:
"A video may have associated with it one or more annotations, which modify the appearance and/or behavior of a video as it was originally submitted to an online video hosting site. Some examples of annotations are graphical text box annotations, which display text at certain locations and certain times of the video, and pause annotations, which halt playback of the video at a specified time within the video. Some annotations, e.g. a graphical annotation (such as a text box annotation) comprising a link to a particular portion of a target video, are associated with a time of the target video, which can be either the video with which the annotation is associated, or a separate video. Selecting such annotations causes playback of the target video to begin at the associated time. Such annotations can be used to construct interactive games using videos, such as a game in which clicking on different portions of a video leads to different outcomes."
Read more: http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/12/30/google-may-host-games-on-youtube
Here's the patent description:
"A video may have associated with it one or more annotations, which modify the appearance and/or behavior of a video as it was originally submitted to an online video hosting site. Some examples of annotations are graphical text box annotations, which display text at certain locations and certain times of the video, and pause annotations, which halt playback of the video at a specified time within the video. Some annotations, e.g. a graphical annotation (such as a text box annotation) comprising a link to a particular portion of a target video, are associated with a time of the target video, which can be either the video with which the annotation is associated, or a separate video. Selecting such annotations causes playback of the target video to begin at the associated time. Such annotations can be used to construct interactive games using videos, such as a game in which clicking on different portions of a video leads to different outcomes."
Read more: http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/12/30/google-may-host-games-on-youtube