I think that's definitely part of it, but I think there may be a bit of deliberate amnesia as well, out of a desire to portray something as totally new, and perhaps to avoid any unwanted historical baggage.
You also see this in "serious games" and its variants. Even Al Gore was recently talking about how the future of videogames is that maybe they'll be used for things like education, too, not just entertainment. Sure, I even buy that. But that's what everyone was saying in the Apple ][ era also! It's not just about credit, but I think we lose something from the amnesia: some of the Apple ][ games were actually better uses of game mechanics for education than much of the fairly shallow stuff being promoted more recently, and we can even learn something from the examples that were more mixed successes (though admittedly there was a lot of bad "edutainment", too).
You also see this in "serious games" and its variants. Even Al Gore was recently talking about how the future of videogames is that maybe they'll be used for things like education, too, not just entertainment. Sure, I even buy that. But that's what everyone was saying in the Apple ][ era also! It's not just about credit, but I think we lose something from the amnesia: some of the Apple ][ games were actually better uses of game mechanics for education than much of the fairly shallow stuff being promoted more recently, and we can even learn something from the examples that were more mixed successes (though admittedly there was a lot of bad "edutainment", too).