Plus could be through online community building. People have a sense of wanting to belong or to be part of something. Users would come to Geocities and other website hosts to set up free webpages. You have both the interactive aspect of developing the webpage and you have the sense of community by sharing your webpage with the world. With games, you have people's instinct for competition and winning even if the only prize is getting the top score.
People see all of their names on a winners' board.
Sony would do this by developing games or piggybacking the Internet onto a popular videogame. That could take off. For those who are wondering if the WebTV would be getting games, well, I don't know. However, in a related matter, according to reports previously reported in the News section, a company named Inergy hopes to offer a word processor, a calendar program, and a finance program for the webtv next year. Inergy will first offer website-building and email applications for the webtv next year.