Steem is a great place for games, a very high TPS, free transactions, decentralised, money system built in, etc. I think the future of steem lies in things that other social media can't emulate. Other, already more popular, places could emulate whatever reward curve we settle on, they could build interconnected sites, hold normal games, etc. If they wanted to wipe steem off the map they probably could. I think the only way forward is creating something they can't emulate.I think that lies mostly in games. My idea of a game they can't emulate is something that scales perfectly, or near-perfectly. ELO systems and stuff like that are fun, but they scale just as well over a blockchain as central servers. Maybe something like an open-world tile-based game is a good idea. Something where the tiles can be separate entities and only need to be updated when interacted with. If we keep the range of anything that could effect them over time to a minimum it could theoretically scale over a blockchain, or even multiple blockchains if put together right.