Kicking in open doors?
JAson Della Rocca at Reality Panic, writes about games as elite knowledge. He refers to the article on Grand Theft Auto inspiring professors, and goes from there to discussing academic preferences of Shakespeare:

Even with all the work the IGDA is doing to build bridges with academics, there's still a (somewhat diminishing) sense that games are not worthy or are trivial. Well, Gee warns that "Shakespeare in its time was popular entertainment, and that the elite looked down upon it. We all know that some of the things that kids know now will be elite knowledge."

Reading about the problem with introducing games to academia, it sounds like it has to be GTA3 or Shakespeare. This is a simplification of the problem. The problem is to get the people already established interested. As James Gees puts it:

"My colleagues thought I was crazy," he says. "Fortunately, around here they are very tolerant of letting senior faculty do what they want."

The truth is that in most academic institutions, senior faculty have a lot of leeway. And the people who learned to use and enjoy computer games are quickly coming into these positions. Games and computers are old enough by now that they will be a natural part of the objects of study, simply by being a natural part of the lives of the researchers.