I think there is a market for more short games, not every game needs to have indefinite updates. If a dev goes into a project knowing it's going to be a short story (ie dumb kowala games) i think it can work.
I can't remember the name but one "family" game used the same stars for every scene and it was pretty great. I find that when the actors are changed i stop following
Depends on the writer. Some devs can only mention step once and still make the rest of the game make sense to get around some censorship. If they game isn't focused on family i find it doesn't really effect the story much because not a lot of emphasis is placed on the family aspect.