[noahth]

I think the fact that this is comparable to sports or jazz is exactly the point. While I imagine that you'd have to go back prettaayyyy far to find the time when sports were demonized as anything from an utter sin to a slightly pitiable time-waster, jazz certainly endured those characterizations when it was emerging into popular culture.

The same is true of any number of other media that now enjoy nigh-immeasurable popular esteem: the novel, for example. If we'd had the same educational-industrial apparatus then as we do now, surely some enterprising PhD candidate would have staked his career on studies illuminating the benefits of reading novels.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this - the real question that remains is just how valuable this effect of gaming is in the non-gaming world. And boy is that a doozy of a question!

[fgf]

ability in sport = martial prowess / hunting skills / good health in general / good genes in general -- It has always been more or less universally respected.

Jazz players always had subculture specific social status, same with hip-hop pioneers, early rock musicians etc.

[yesbabyyes]

Jazz players always had subculture specific social status, same with hip-hop pioneers, early rock musicians etc.

As have gamers.

[fgf]

"social status" that doesn't get you laid =//= social status that does