Video Games: The Movie

1-  Video games were successful for various reasons, the main ones being that, unlike other medias, people can interact with games and their challenges, and in many cases, with the story too, having the ability to change the course of the story-line depending on the choices they make. But there are many factors that influence a game's popularity: an elaborate plot, interesting game play with challenging levels and opponents, and even art and music can influence, for they can captivate and trigger emotions.

2-  There was a crash in the game industry during the 1980s because of the lack of creativity, work and effort designers were putting into the creation of games. Right before this disastrous period, video games had been introduced to the public for the first time by Atari, and had been a major success which caused investors to see this industry as a sure entrance of money, but instead of creating quality games they just mass produced, and after a series of disappointing games, one of them being E.T., launched by Atari, the public stopped purchasing games, and considered them something that would die by then.

3-  Yes, I do believe video games are a form of art. The literal meaning of art is "the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, producing works appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power", so anything that triggers emotions is a form of art, and I believe that games definitely do that, even if a game possesses very simple graphics it can still be impacting, because when it comes to games everything influences the final outcome: music, art, story-line, characters, etc. 
A song or a painting are considered art, so why shouldn't a video game, that, possesses all these, has to make everything have an interesting logical connection, and takes equal or more effort to create, not be considered a form of art?

4-  I believe the next evolution in video games will be the power to have people "enter" games. The first step to this has already begun, a good example being virtual reality, of course, this technology is still not very developed, but I believe that someday, perhaps soon, people will be able to enter virtual worlds similar to how it is portrayed in movies, or series, such as Swords Art Online, where characters are able to put on gadgets connected to their brain that makes them enter video games.