I don't play games for story but rarely skip cutscenes because I like experience the entire product that the people who made it gave me. Even if the story is crap, which is usally the case.
That said, in regards to general story in games, I think games tend to be pretty bad at plot but are generally good at characters, world building, mood and atmosphere, themes, symbols and scenary. When you spend 20-50 hours with characters, you can kind of get "attached" to them, especially when they're essentially under your control. I like that aspect of video games -- that is, pulling you into a foreign world -- more so than the actual stories.
That's why I made that "What game world would you like to live?" gamefaqs thread at gaf, because I like imaginary places, and being able to control an avatar in a made up world built from scratch just scratches a certain itch that I can't define. I really like that and think video games really excel at that, and for that reason I find that adventure games (in traditonal, point and click sense) and horror games tend to have the best stories and characters, because they're all about that type of story telling I just described.
Video game stories have their place. They're not all awful, but the really good ones are few and far between. People who act like game stories are all shit and have no place are just as annoying as the people who say games are better than modern film. Something can be enjoyable and not be high art, which is the problem with nerds: they see anything that is enjoyable as high art, lacking any sense of objectiviity in their opinions. See: Star Wars. But the flip side is also true, they'll trash things that aren't TRYING to be high art simply because they're entertaining when that's the whole point, see: Avatar.
