It's been my opinion for a while that video games, in order to evolve past the current point, are in need of critical reflection at another level than the game reviews of mainstream media. This is not a task that's in the authority of reviewers or the creators, but should be handled by independent thinkers outside of the mediums target audience and those professionally involved with it.

I remember reading an anthology of semiotic analyses of graphic novels that was released before Scott McCloud popularized the topic. I think this sort of examination helped in the creation and marketing of the graphic novels available today. It could well be that such articles about games are published somewhere.

Advertisement, movies and television have long been subject of studies regarding their structure, how they are perceived and the role they play culturally. I think this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. As long as games are regarded as pop-media aimed at adolescent nerds, they will be marketed and produced as such. While Nintendo is making some progress in this area with the DS, i'm not really happy with the positioning of their line of products. Critical examination of games would provide a "center of gravity" outside of the self-evolving industry.