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I work kind of in this area as a researcher, so maybe I have a rosy-glass view, but the arguments seem a bit dated to me. Sure, in say 1999 this was a problem, and not that many people took games seriously. But in 2009? Yeah, people still like to kvetch ("games are rarely taken seriously blah blah and we aim to change that" is a standard opening move if you're writing a paper), and maybe the average person on the street doesn't, but there are plenty of inroads:

There are journals and academic conferences on games, in both the humanities and computer science.

MIT Press has an entire division of books about videogames. I'm currently reading one about the Atari 2600, which, yes, even covers its role as a cultural and artistic platform.

There are initiatives and companies to use games for "serious" purposes. The U.S. Army in particular takes them seriously and funds development.

Braid sold over $1m, despite being a kind of weird arty game made by a single guy. You can even get an MFA doing fine-arts stuff related to games.

Heck, Gamasutra itself frequently publishes about games as art, and it's semi-high-profile (at least to the extent that getting linked at Slashdot once a week counts as semi-high-profile).

I mean yeah, I'll agree that far more people respect, say, film than respect games. But it's not as if this is some novel argument and nobody has ever thought about taking games seriously before. Also, to some extent, it's the fault of people not making more interesting games: Hollywood may be crap, but there are a lot more innovative indie films out there than innovative indie games.

Will Wright is probably so smart because he's been working out. Did you see how buff he is in that article?

All kidding aside, yeah, video games do have the potential to change the world, both for the better, and the worse. In instances like WoW or Evercrack, people have let it ruin their lives through loss of jobs, divorces, etc. That's not the games' faults though. I play WoW for maybe 4-5 hours a week, sometimes less. It can still be fun, and it doesn't dominate my life.

But then there's the "Serious Games" that can be used to train people on doing many real world tasks while helping to keep them from making deadly mistakes.

If they do it well enough, they may even create games that are entertaining enough to play them for fun, even if they teach you something as a side effect.
Like, say, this one:
www.americasarmy.com
or these: www.sheppardsoftware.com

There was an interesting comment made at the recent Game Developers Conference in the Serious Games Summit. Someone was asked what would be the equivalent of the DARPA Grand Challenge as it related to game technology? The answer described a scenario that went something like this...

"You and your team walk into the DARPA director's office with a globe. You give it a spin and ask him to randomly choose a place - some country/location. You go back to your office and get working. A week later, you give him a 'game'. He runs it and finds himself 'in' that location he picked. He hears the language, sees the sites, hears the sounds, etc. He plays this for a week. Then he actually goes to that place. When he gets there, he 'knows' it already because you've really taught him."

Neat challenge idea.