IMO the biggest change in the last few years is the rise of Twine and other hypertext/choice-based IF. A minority of this year’s XYZZY finalists had a parser, but parser games mostly won the awards.
The other big change is that commercial text-based games have had some really big hits in the last few years, especially on iOS (I believe Device 6, A Dark Room, and 80 Days all hit the Top 10 Games in the App Store for a little while) and that the market is sustaining several small IF companies (Inkle Studios, Choice of Games, Tin Man Games) even without “blockbuster” hits.
On a technical front, Inform 7 has developed a lot of features in the last few years, notably adaptive/indexed text, which made Counterfeit Monkey possible. Glulx games are working better and better on the web via Parchment, which makes games much more accessible to potential players who don’t know what an interpreter is.