Cultural force of video games

The fact that video games have been economic forces in the last 5-7 years can't be denied -- much of the technical development of video/audio cards and mass capacity hard drives could be said to be driven by the economics of wanting to sell more games through versioning. But the fact that they are become a cultural force is a fairly recent development.

I see a partnership between Telefilm and the video game industry, as they position a video game competition as a "great Canadian" endeavour, as an example of the emerging cultural force of games.