I'd like to get up with it, but there's a small detial of 3000 miles distance preventing me. Still, I'd love to hear what experiments you've been getting up to lately. Personally I've been delving into casual game production and really revising my philosophy on game's place in pop culture, and on UI design in particular. I think the active difficulty adjustment you proposed in your thesis can be extended to characters to provide a sort of modular gameplay/storytelling experience.

Remember that dream you had about the four vampires? I could design that game, you just have the different characters and their relationships represent different simulation dynamics, and let the player gravitate to the style she prefers. The trick is getting the gameplay preference and the character preference to match up, there are a few solutions, but its still non-trivial and best tackled on a case-by-case basis, depending on the mechanics.