I’m a gamer myself, and I can see a few issues that video games face that has definitely gotten better, but still have room for growth.
The first one is largely a generational thing. Older people, or people who don’t play them, are unaware of how much videogames have progressed and still see them as either a young technology or as just plain immature. Even people my age, who grew up with them, but “grew up” and stopped playing them still think of them as kids games, largely because they WERE aimed at kids for a long time. The thing is, there’s a huge range of modern video games specifically aimed at mature audiences, whether they’re as benign as sports games, or they’re as violent as an R-rated movie. For those stuck thinking of the SNES days, where there was controversy over pixelated blood in Mortal Kombat, it’s probably hard to imagine the swath of mature games.
Second, it’s still a relatively young form of art and entertainment, and it takes time to get mainstream acceptance. New forms of art, new genres, whatever, always take time to gain cultural acceptance. The only way for it to happen is to just give it time. A lot of people don’t realize just how much goes into them either. Some modern videogames have development budgets comparable to major blockbuster movies; for instance, Star Wars: The Old Republic reportedly cost around $200 Million to develop, and that doesn’t include marketting or building the infrastructure to support it. The thing is, video games offer a unique artistic and entertainment experience because they can provide the spectacle of a massive film, with the story complexity of a series of novels or TV series, all while being interactive to make the whole experience more immersive.
I think the best comparison on getting more cultural acceptance is probably comic books, which were seen as a nerdy thing for a long time, but over the past dozen years or so, and attempts to get those ideas into other forms of media didn’t do too well. But now they’re highly successful films, Marvel’s cinematic universe has gross several Billion over the past five years, DC has the success of the Nolan Batman films and Man of Steel, along with the fairly successful Smallville and now Arrow. But videogames have yet to produce anything close to that level of success. However, we might see this trend start to change with the upcoming Assassin’s Creed and Warcraft films. They’re getting the sorts of budgets and attention, and they’re broad and accessible universes and mythology that ought to be able to help make videogames more appealling to a larger audience.
Third, videogames are seen as a largely solo experience. Certainly as I was growing up, a lot of my gaming experience was either alone, or at most, shared with a brother or a friend. But over time, gaming has become more and more social. In my high school and college years, gaming parties became common, with 4-player games and such. These days, online play is a HUGE portion of the gaming industry, whether it’s online competitive play in sports, FPS, or RTS types of games, or the obvious social implications of MMOs. Games are very social these days, but those who aren’t doing it just see someone sitting in front of their TV or computer and think they’re not interacting with others. Sure, it’s not the same as face to face interaction, but I’d say it is still generally more social than many other electronic types of social interaction like facebook, texting, twitter, or whatever, since it typically requires real time interaction and cooperation or competition.
Either way, I think it’s just a matter of time, I’m fairly certain within the next decade or so, we’ll be at the point where most people had videogames as an important part of their childhoods, and they’ll just be accepted almost naturally as a result.