I know a big draw to videogames now is the story, and what goes into it.  People like to play games with real good plots, dialog, characters and so on.  It would be assumed the quality of this is based on the storytellers involved, so the videogame industry getting the top storytellers would help make better quality products.

Well, I have a question: Why would the top storytellers choose the videogame medium for storytelling over other things like books and film, or tv?  Unless it is a case of the Call of Duty franchise throwing a bunch of money at a writer who worked on the Batman series, why would any storyteller pick videogames as a medium to work in?

And if there isn't much of a reason, why would people playing videogames expect the videogame medium to excel at storytelling?

Video games lend themselves really well to world building. A story teller who likes to create a rich world is better suited to a video game instead of a movie.

They are also suited to story tellers who want to tell their story through interactions, exploration and discovery. Games like Ico, Sotc and Journey excel at that. Video games are still a new medium though, movies and indirectly tv have almost a 100 year advantage on video games, a lot more if you count plays.

As the medium matures it will draw more and better story tellers. Games like the walking dead are an indication that things are starting to move along.

well for one thing you can tell a much longer story, also games offer interactivity which is something that movies will never have. one thing also that movies will never have is the link between the gamers and character they play with. often when playing a game if somebody in the game attacks or wrongs the character, you feel is if you were the one who was wronged or attacked. story tellers can make you relate to the character in a way that movies or books never will

Thing is that game design is a different beast than storytelling.  There is a big tradeoff between offering gameplay and driving a narrative.  I can see that someone may dabble in the area of storytelling via the videogame medium, but if they are that good, the financial opportunities seem much larger in the areas of film, television or writing.

So, pretty much why would anyone into videogames expect it to get the best forms of storytelling, if that is what they are into?

I think video games are / will be better suited to story telling then movies. Just like books they are not constrained to real time and offer all kinds of ways to explore the thoughts of the characters.
Writers will get better at using the video game medium for telling stories. Good writing comes with age, we don't have mature writers yet that have grown up with modern video games.

Well, the easy answer is they wouldn't.

I love video games, and love some of the touching stories they tell. But video games are lacking a very important thing that books, television, movies, and other artistic media have: the oneness of the storyteller.

In a movie or book or TV show, the creator displays his creative vision to his audience. The audience members receive the vision and can interpret it in any way they choose, but they cannot involve themselves in the storytelling process. In video games, however, the audience is part of the process. So the artistic vision of the storyteller in video games is modified by the player, by the simple act of interacting with it.

Simply put, video games are interactive art. And that's why top storytellers might pass up video games in favor of other media that allow them to tell their stories.

The audience is part of the process is any form.
In books you imagine your own world and what the characters look like. The writer has to take this into account and uses the characters thoughts to establish their motives and how they perceive the world.
In movies you develop your own ideas about the characters. The actions and conversations between characters are more important in movies to establish their motives.
Video games offer a lot more ways to tell a story. The biggest problem with video games atm is that there are multiple writers collaborating on a general theme. There is indeed no oneness of the storyteller in that sense. Plus the story writer is usually not seen as the most important part, it's often just a vehicle to tie the set pieces together. That's a much bigger reason why top storytellers want to stay clear from video games.

But the reader of a book cannot rearrange the words on a page.

The moviegoer cannot choose in which order to view to film reels.

Of course the audience is part of the artistic process. What would art be if not for the audience? But the audience in more traditional art forms is passive. In video games, the audience is active, constantly manipulating the art. It's part of what makes video games great, but it's also what keeps many artists away.

Well, they might be fans of games themselves, that understand, and appreciate the constraints of the medium and see it as a fun challenge.

That is one of the angles I was thinking of.  When you want to tell a story, you want to control the flow of what is going on, to get your point across.  Because of this, the game approach works against it.

Now, I won't say that someone who likes to build worlds, and flesh them out, wouldn't be drawn to game design.  Such individuals like to create very detailed universes and set them free and have them go the way they want.  This is different than storytelling though.  I can see guys drawn to building worlds wanting to build games, but not the storytelling who wants to control the flow.

In this, as a gamer, you can get a very rich and engrossing adventure where you create the story in the world.  What you are less likely to get is a captivating story where the controlled narrative engages you and brings you in.  I know with sandbox games, there is an attempt to do both, but that is usually done by pre-crafted set pieces that link an overarching story, and side stuff.  It is linear story diced up and spread around a sandbox.