For something that might be more applicable to your application, check out Tetris 99, which is a battle royale version of Tetris that Nintendo released earlier this year. Not only does it encapsulate an interface that might work better, but it also (as I understand it) thas mechanics to link you to other players in the set so there's a bit of 1-on-1 competition where people affect each other within the larger competition to last the longest.

I can imagine this being pretty fun if, for example you could also perform some task (answer a trivia question, move the mouse through a maze, etc) that might affect others (such as blank their video feed for a few seconds, or flash it white, or apply a weird color filter). The attention and concentration might make people forget to not blink, and the altering off opponents visuals could throw them off as well.