Hope you don't mind waiting another 30 years, at best, for that.

Here's the thing, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but people (admittedly, people that don't care to think it through very far) instantly equate "games" with something that is supposed to be "fun" or non-serious. They think that the only purpose a game has is to entertain, but that's incredibly near-sighted. It's a stigma that you would hope the gaming industry would have shoved off by now, as the film industry has, but unfortunately that's just not the case. That stigma is still there.

Lets imagine a conversation with an average American citizen in which I try to pitch to them my vision of a 9/11 video game:

Me: I want to make a video game where you play as a police officer or fire fighter during the events of 9/11-

Them: That's disrespectful. A video game about such a tragedy? How can you be so callous to the victims and survivors!

Now lets imagine the same conversation where I don't use the term video game:

Me: I want to make a multi-media digital interactive art piece where the viewer is put into the shoes of a police officer or firefighter dealing with the events of 9/11. I want to convey the sense of terror and helplessness involved with that day, as well as give the viewer the opportunity to understand the duties and sacrifices that these individuals made by dealing with these situations themselves.

Them: That sounds like something that could be really compelling. I think it would really help people better connect with those events.

So yeah, "video game" as a term has a stigma associated with it. Unfortunately its not just "outsiders" that have perpetuated this stigma, but developers and publishers as well. We haven't done a particularly good job as a community or an industry of dealing with touchy material, so it's not like we're blameless in this.