How many movies does your avg movie goer know or can name movies from the 40s? Maybe, maybe half a dozen (it's a wonderful life, casablanca, citizen kane, Disney Fantasia and Pinocchio, and his girl Friday. I'm pretty sure your average person can name an order of magnitude more video games from pong to mario to sonic to modern day AAA games. And over time, some will have staying power, like I hope Breath of the Wild will.
I’m not sure the recency bias of a contemporary average person is a good proxy for the artistic achievement of a time now three generations past. If we were to enumerate the list of major, artistically significant films released in the 30s and 40s, we would produce dozens of titles that even the average person has heard of, if perhaps not seen themselves. In the same vein, the average person would struggle to identify Plato or Cicero, let alone have read any of their work, but the names would at least ring a bell.
Video games are in a weird place because they arguably reached maturity of design with 1985’s Super Mario Bros. But as wonderful as SMB is, it doesn’t mean anything or have anything to say: it is just the first game to truly nail 2d platformer mechanics to a transcendent degree. Indeed, as the OP mentioned, the best video games seem to be able to do as of yet with respect to depth of meaning is the equivalent of a mid-grade zombie film (The Last of Us), and the industry is such a grind that the writers burn out before really developing their craft. Maybe video games will eventually bring a depth of meaning and insight equivalent to their refinement of play mechanics, but they’re not there yet.
